It is somewhat nerve-wracking writing an article about someone who is a writer himself. I am talking about my life-long friend, Henrik Mortensen. He is the author of the book, Fly Casting Scandinavian Style, and is currently working on another.

I met Henrik 25 years ago in a little town called Thisted in Denmark. We became the best of friends and have stayed in touch over the years, meeting in New York, Florida, Vancouver, Denmark and most recently in Almuñécar. Henrik has gone from being a small-town guy to being quite the superstar (or big fish) in the world of fly-fishing.

Thanks to his passion, dedication and natural talent for fly-fishing, he was able to transform his hobby into his profession. Henrik has been fly-fishing since he was 12-years old, and because there was no one to teach him the techniques back then, he taught himself. His skills developed to such an extent that today, he is considered one of the world’s best fly casters and salmon fishermen.

He travels to the best salmon and sea trout rivers in the world to instruct and guide others on his own accord. Over the past 20 years he has instructed thousands of anglers in his particular style of casting and fishing. His weeklong, hosted, salmon-fishing trips to Gaspé, Canada in 2011 are already sold out. He must be good!

By the way, for the past 15 years, he has also been developing and designing high-quality fly-fishing equipment. Since June 2008 he has been the Research and Development Director at the Norwegian company Zpey. He has just finished his latest DVD, called Patterns of Patagonia, the 6th DVD in his Fly-Fishing Academy Series. It is filmed in the world’s finest sea-trout river, Río Grande, in southern Argentina. The series focuses primarily on casting and fishing for salmon and sea trout. However, anyone wanting to learn how to cast and improve their fly-fishing style will benefit from them. If you want to see video trailers of the series, they can be viewed on his website: www.henrik-mortensen.com.

Henrik also holds fly casting and fishing seminars/clinics around the world (on average 150 per year). These are mostly organized by fly shops in conjunction with angling clubs and preservation societies.

This is actually one of the reasons he was able to visit me in Almuñécar mid-Nov. It was a short stopover for him after an intense week in China and Korea before heading for Barcelona to work. He was scheduled to hold a 2-day fly casting clinic and a 1-day demonstration (for 150 fly fishermen) in Oliana (Río Segre).

While he was visiting me, I decided to make a nice dinner, and figuring that he must obviously like salmon, that’s exactly what I made. Being the gentleman he is, he said nothing except that it was delicious.

The next day I brought out smoked salmon to put in a wrap for lunch. Well, this time he couldn’t keep quiet. He pointed out that the fish was Norwegian farmed salmon and that the salmon we had for dinner the night before was also farmed salmon. Then he asked if I had any idea under which conditions these salmon were farmed. I did not. Thanks to him, I will think twice before I ever eat farmed salmon again.