Okay, the clan suggestion system cycles through clans. This was something I have noticed as a clan hopper for trading and as a CO watching our membership fill back up. It always comes in bursts.

If your clan has open slots, it will end up on the suggested clan list for players that the game thinks fit in your clan. (War stats, total trophy count, mean, median or mode trophy count, etc... My 4300, 4600 and 2100 accounts see very different lists with only a little overlap between my 4300 and 4600. I am not shown many gold clans for my 2100 suggested clan list.)

Having the game send players your way isn't the best way to fill up, though. The best way is to get down to around 33 players and then go clan hopping to recruit.

You don't try to snipe their best players. You try to merge an entire clan into yours. Use an account just over 4k and go out clan hopping.

You are looking for a clan of close friends that have stayed together but can't war effectively. Find a silver league clan with 17 to 20 members. You'll need to tweak your search for member count and total trophies to find what you're willing to accept. Come up with a concise statement that you can copy and paste. I use something similar to this:

Together we could be a 50 man clan. We don't want your strongest, we want all of you. Clan name #clantag. We cut our dead weight and have 17 open spots. War at least once a week, never skip battles, and donate 100 per week and none of you will get kicked. Discuss this amongst yourselves and send someone over if you're interested. We will offer CO to your leader. We always find a merger within 2 days, so hurry if you want to be part of a 50 man clan and actually win wars!

I send that to clans for a day with my mini account. I'm about to do this for our 5th time (it used to say "hit 10/10 clan chest and we wait to complete until everyone gets crowns"). We always get a very enthusiastic group of friends joining within 2 days. You NEED 15 open slots, minimum, to do this effectively.