Carp fishing throughout Europe is by no means new; however in the last year its popularity seems to have risen tenfold. Well, instead of bringing you another Brits account of his fishing holiday we are pleased to bring to you the another blog from Dutch angler Nick van Rossum who has found some seldom found peace and tranquillity in the heart of Holland. Enjoy

The Oaks - A small mysterious lake with only oaks around it.

After months of carp fishing on one of the hardest canals in Holland I came across this beautiful lake. My mates and I started there without any knowledge of it. Consequently, everything was all new for me and that’s one of the nice things about carp fishing – starting somewhere with a clean sheet, creating new tactics – simply a total different style of fishing going from the river to a lake.

How do I get started? I first walked around it to see if there were any signs of carp. This is one of the most important things about carp fishing; most carp anglers prebait and keep staring at one spot.

Don’t wait for the carp to come to you, go and find them!
When I spot the carp I take my bait boat and fishfinder and find the perfect depths that I want to fish.

I don’t normally like using my bait boat, preferring to do it the old-fashioned way, but I wanted to stay quiet so opted to use it.

Using Spods and Spombs creates a lot of disturbance and on small, pressured lakes like this my main goal was to stay quiet and keep searching for them.

I then had to decide how to target them. I opted for a 74g inline lead with only putty on my main line so that the last two metres lay perfectly on the ground.

I used a multi rig with a snowman bait – 20mm boilie with a 15mm orange tutti frutti pop-up – CB Tackle Captive X hook and Fox Edges hook link
This blog is based on seven sessions and all the beautiful moments were captures with the guys of NCC, Frank van Dooren and his brother Ramon and Dave Scheffer.

We went every Friday for seven weeks and every session was enjoyable. The first was the most fun because we didn't know what happened to us.

First session
Arriving at a new lake is always special and I start doing all the things I explained earlier.

All four us were there the first session so we could fish the whole lake.
Everybody used one rig with the tutti frutti boilie and one with another bait.

I opted for Belachan soaked in Maggi and my lovely old-school tutti frutti boilie and some hennep.

All rods were out, and we were still in our canal mood, making nice hamburgers (the famous burgers of Slick Nick) ha ha.

The first indicator started screaming like a baby and I ran to the rod and had an amazing fight. The battle was so intense it felt like a river carp; these fish fought like monsters.

The first carp caught was a very nice common of 12kg (26lb plus), and we took photographs for posterity.

The second rod started screaming and when another indicated something we thought that the carp was swimming through the other lines. It was mad but a beautiful moment that we will never forget.

The tutti frutti boilies were being taken all the time, so we switched all rods to them with hennep.

The night was very quiet, although they where jumping the whole time.

In the morning the rods started screaming again and we caught seven carp on our first session. That was mega because we didn’t catch that many on the canals we’d fished for months.

The second session I was really ready and knew how to catch them. I had more time and took a quick walk around to see where they were hiding.

I went in the corner and the other guys went on another spot. I’d forgotten my bait boat so I had to use PVA bags. I cut my boilies in half and put them in the bag and attached it to my hook and cast it near to some trees.

It didn't take that long for the first baby scream from my Fox NTX-r. I was a far distance from my rods so had to run to them. Consequently, I lost the fish halfway. Lesson learnt.

It was quiet for a few hours and I wanted to try something different from a bottom bait because I had a lot of dirt on my hook.

I made a simple pop-up rig. I used Buchu-Berry pop-ups from Sticky on top of my half tutti frutti boilies.
I slept for 30 minutes before my rod started running. I had to be quick because I was fishing near obstacles, so my baitrunner was very tight. The result was a beautiful common and I settled back down to sleep.

The night was very quiet and at 6am one of my rods started screaming again, resulting in another nice common and very successful session.
All the subsequent sessions were very great for all four of us. We caught 51 carp in seven sessions, all tutti frutti boilies and hennep.

How lovely to fish on a small lake with powerful carp when you’ve just come from a very hard canal. Frank van Dooren always says it’s about the three Fs: friendship, fun and fishing.
I’ll be releasing other blogs very soon about our adventures on the canals in Veghel (Holland).

I want to end with this: The most dangerous risk of all is the risk of spending your life not doing what you want. You can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.

Nick van Rossum