Let me start with one simple rule – faith. Not religion but faith in what you do as a carp angler. I mean have faith in your end tackle, baits, and your way of angling. If you have hope in other things it might fail. I don’t believe in hope. Hope is the beggar! Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.

Having real faith in my baits and suchlike has led me to catch more carp.

My name is Nick van Rossum, I'm 27 and the father of two beautiful daughters. I'm also the marketing director of an amazing headwear brand called Novio Carp Clothing. I have been carp fishing since I was a kid so I have many years under my belt. The last couple of years I have started sharing my experiences on the internet and I really love it. I see people around me catching more and more carp and I really appreciate their captures. So having the honour of sharing my thoughts and visions of the carp scene through an amazing magazine like Total Carp is truly amazing.

I'll really hope I’m not the run-of-the-mill blogger that you've seen before because I like to be a Wolf instead of a sheep.

I posted a picture of a bottle of Maggi Sauce on Twitter and received a great response and questions as to why you should use it. Let me try to explain.

Maggi is an appetite stimulator like salt or pepper; that’s one of the main reasons why we add it to our food. Basically, it makes your appetite bigger so you eat more and more.

Carp anglers buy all kinds of soaks and spend a lot of money on sugar/glucose syrup with five per cent flavour mixed so they can soak their boilies to make them more attractive.

I'm not saying that’s a bad thing but there are cheaper and more effective ways – like Maggi. Put your boilies in a bucket, add Maggi until all the boilies have a wet look and leave them for 24 hours!

A bottle costs 1€ (0.70p) and on a bucket of boilies I use 1/10th of the bottle.

Give it a try; I know it will add an edge to your boilies, especially at this time a year.

Always have a bottle in your carp bag.

I used it on fishy, belachan or spicy garlic boilies, not sweet ones. It’s well worth a try.

So for now I want to say thank you for reading and hope you enjoy a short philosophy-based blog.

“There is no use planning for a future that when you get to it and it becomes a present, you won’t be there you'll be living in some other future which hasn't yet arrived.

And so in this way one is never able to actually inherit and enjoy the fruits of one’s actions.

You can't live at all... unless you can live fully. Now!”

Thank you for reading.
Nick van Rossum