Tar Farm Lake No. 8 - Linear Fisheries

Tar Farm Lake No. 8 is the smallest and most exclusive of the five bookable lakes on Linear Fisheries' Tar Farm complex near Witney, Oxfordshire. Opened in 2022, it is a compact water of around 8 acres with just eight pegs: six along one bank and two, pegs 7 and 8, sitting close together on the opposite side. Every peg must be pre-booked through the Go Catch app, so there is no queuing, no buckets in swims, and often only part of the lake is occupied. Most pegs allow you to park directly behind the swim.

The lake is exceptionally deep for its size. Open water runs to 20 to 25 feet, with pockets of 28 feet and more in front of pegs 7 and 8. The key features are the shallower plateaus in 13 to 17 feet of water that rise out of the deep, steep marginal shelves with cliff-edge drop-offs, firm clay bars, and margins of 9 to 12 feet. Linear publishes depth contour maps for the lake, and the pegs line up with far-bank markers, but a marker rod is still essential to find the plateaus precisely. Marginal weed is present and the water can be tap clear in spring, though the feeding plateaus are generally clean and smooth.

Lake 8 was stocked on a deliberately different philosophy to the other Tar Farm waters: fewer fish with a much bigger average size, with the stated aim of creating a real big-fish water for years to come. Around 240 carp were introduced, at least 160 of them at 14lb or more, and the pellet-reared, mirror-dominated stock has grown at an extraordinary rate. Regulars now describe an immense head of fish between 33 and 39lb and a small group of good forties. The lake record has moved from a 45lb mirror in November 2023 to a 51lb 13oz mirror from Swim 1 in October 2025, a fish that was stocked at 25lb only a few years earlier. Commons are present but noticeably fewer than mirrors.

Tactically, depth dictates everything. From spring through early autumn the carp spend long periods suspended over 20 feet of water, and zigs of 10 to 12 feet with black or black-and-red foam are widely regarded as the number one method. Solid PVA bags are the stealth opener for showing or fizzing fish and produced the lake record fished tight to a margin tree. When the fish are on the deck, a bed of pellet, corn, hemp and boilies on a 13 to 17 foot plateau can produce rapid flurries, and bites are predominantly a morning and daytime affair rather than through the night. The margins, particularly the 9 foot shelf in Peg 1, should never be ignored. Above all this is a water that rewards anglers who watch the water constantly and move a rod onto showing fish the moment they see them.