Experimenting With Underwater Fly Photography

[letumgo 0]

 

I've been thinking about photographing flies under water for some time and decided to give it a try today. This is my first attempt at photographing a soft hackle fly under water. The fly was photographed in a small plastic storage container filled with water. The fly is suspended from a fine piece of copper wire that I could bend and hold in place. The camera used (Pentax Optio W30) is submerged under water and in macro mode. I'm still trying to get the hang of getting the focus distance just right, but this method seems to be promising.

 

I love how the fibers of the fly capture little bubbles of air and there is a bubble on the back of the thorax.

[JJD 0]

Cool!

[riffleriversteelheadslayer 0]

awesome

[mlwebb 0]

very nice bubbles! - I can imagine focusing could be pretty tricky - I have a hard enough time with flies in air.

Michael

[Soft-hackle 0]

Ray,

Great work! This is very much in line with Hidy's idea of drying the flies between casts to capture air. I imagine this is very attractive to the fish when used without motion. Of course once the fly is moved, I would assume the bubbles dislodge. I once saw an article about coating the submerged fly with Scotch Guard or the like to help it trap even more air. There was a close up photo of a nymph that looked like an Alka Seltzer tablet underwater. Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz!

 

Mark

[Brian Brown75 0]

Thats incredible, i would have never thought thats how a fly looked in a million years

[lykos33 0]

Nice shots, you are opening eyes to what a fish sees when we present a fly to them. With a good variety of flies to study, I'm sure everyone will have ideas on improvements they can make to their favorites :thumbsup:

[Houndog 0]

Nice Ray, interesting perspective!

[Wulff 0]

Thats pretty cool, keep playing with differnt lighting, mounting solutions. I'm sure youll come up with some interesting stuff.

 

J