ESPRESSO T.V.

Anglers in Paradise

 (To Bermagui and Beyond)

13 x 30'

An outstanding high-end travel adventure series consisting of thirteen half-hour episodes. With backgrounds such as the stunning Pacific, the Micronesian Islands and the remoter parts of Australia, a number of aspects are world firsts in content, technical execution and photography. 

The host of the show, Steve Cooper, is Australia's most prolific fishing writer and writes for the most prestigious newspapers and magazines. He has also written over twenty fishing books.

We travel with Steve to the many locations he visits for his magazine articles. By shooting the action with three cameras the viewer gets to witness the scene in real time. One camera is attached to Australia's best free-diving cameraman who at times swims more than a kilometre from the boat to film a fighting Marlin or Mako Sharks. We often get spectacular underwater shots of the actual hook up of these most majestic sea predators.

As if this is not enough, Steve Cooper often succeeds in landing the ocean's most sought-after game and sport fish using only a fly rod. This is the same equipment used in freshwater fishing for trout and Steve can land most of the ocean's pelagic fish on this extremely light equipment!

'Anglers in Paradise' is not about going fishing just to land fish – it's about trial and error and technique. It's about remote locations and native culture. Some locations have never been fished with a rod and reel before. 'Anglers in Paradise' is about the inside story – we target an individual species and present an overview of how that species survives and lives in the ocean; then we see if Steve can actually out- smart and land one.

We scuba dive the reef or area we are about to fish and explain how and why this particular reef works and why the target species is present. We discover how weather, currents and sea temperatures may affect this reef – 'Anglers in Paradise' is about education. We sometimes even fish over Second World War wrecks and we explain how these wrecks are now natural reefs.

At times Steve Cooper will say to camera that not much is happening – yet our underwater cameraman has filmed an incredible amount of fish in our trail – and when shown to Cooper he is surprised that nothing was happening on his reel. As Steve says "…the filming has made me aware of how little even the greatest anglers know about fish behaviour".

This series merges for the first time scuba, fishing and blue-water hunting expertise to bring to the viewer a very unique program.