VLAD PAVLOVICI

Lake Varlaam may come as a big surprise if you're not used to fishing gravel pits. It's hard to imagine how a small lake of only 7ha like Sector A can be difficult while at first glance it should be fairly easy since it's stocked with no less than 150 carp, possibly more, most of them over 15kg.

But the big carp always play hard to get and that's exactly what makes fishing this lake so interesting. Had it been easy, we wouldn't have bothered with it. It would have been an ordinary runs water. It's actually pretty difficult at times which makes it a prime target for specimen hunters. The hardest things in life are the things most worth doing.

Location is the key element when fishing Varlaam but never disregard other aspects. To be successful when fishing for wary old carp (actually they're young carp but the growth rates are phenomenal) you may need to fine tune baits, baiting strategies and even rigs. 

The lake's rules are quite unusual in some respects. Not only that boats are allowed, but they are compulsory in snaggy areas as it's often easier to extract carp from snags using a boat. To keep the mainline above the gravel bars which are strewn with abrasive mussels, inline floats must be used. Sounds a little bit complicated but don't worry, it's easy. Anglers who had never used boats before quickly became adept at this style of fishing and now regard it as the best way for minimising fish losses.

Last but not least, Varlaam is a very "transparent" lake. I am not talking about the water clarity, which is nice, but about the amount of information (features and videos) that we've been producing to help anglers understand the lake and be successful.