Danish fishing film maker Niels Vestegaard is a household name here in Denmark and large parts of Scandinavia and Northern Europe. He has been producing fishing videos for more than a decade, and is almost an institution in Danish fishing films with a production that dwarfs what other Danish filmmakers have made.
Yesterday he screened his two latest videos in Copenhagen as part of a tour he has done in Denmark together with the danish fly-shop Go-Fishing. The event is a merry gathering of anglers and apart from the videos shown on big cinema screens, there was a small exhibition area with fly tying, lodges/guides, magazines, shops and much more, so you could hang around before and after and browse the goodies and chat with other anglers as well as the filmmaker and the participants from the video.
Niels has no specialty as such. He's a flyfisherman himself but has a very broad background, and his videos feature all kinds of fishing from carp and pike fishing to salmon. But one of his really strong is coastal fishing for sea run browns - also known as sea trout.
He has made several videos on this subject, and the latest have been the series "Sea Trout Secrects", which have been changing the way we look at sea trout fishing, not least because of Niels' groundbreaking underwater filming where he has been able to deploy static cameras underwater in the area fished, enabling us to see some of what's going on under the surface while we fish.
One thing that these glimpses into the depth has revealed is that the number of fish we cover is probably much larger than what we think. Time and time again Niels' cameras show fish where the angler has felt nothing.
In the most recent two videos - Sea Trout Secrets 5 and 6 - the Danish instructor and filmmaker has upped the ante and shows us unbelievable footage of fish following and taking lures and flies. Using a camera literally cast out with the lure, he manages to film the bait as it moves through the water and documents how the fish behave when they see the fly or spoon.
Video 5 covers spin fishing and number 6 covers flies. Both contain the usual large number of tips on fishing give by Danish coastal veterans Thomas Hansen (spin) and Claus Eriksen (fly), who takes us through the seasons, but they also contain mesmerizing and exhilarating video of the camera passing over big schools of fish and shows how some fish are unaffected, others follow the lure curiously and a few "taste" or even take it.
What's so exiting about this is the unique view into something that we never see otherwise.
I was seeing the preview together with my good fishing friend Henning Eskol, who noted that we often "feel that the fish are there even though we get no takes", and Vestergaard's videos definitely confirm this.
As Niels himself noted it's not sure that the fish will behave in the same manner where there's no camera in front of the lure, but the videos still show us things which are indeed sea trout secrets - or at least was until now.
I expect to get the DVDs and do a review sometime this month when they get released, and to all the sea trout angler out there I can only say: this release is something to look forward to!
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