New underwater stream photos :)

Every time I go fishing now I take my camera with its underwater housing and when I'm done playing with the trout I roll up my sleeves and play with the bugs.

I've just added the pictures from my last several trips to my website... got some pretty neat ones.

Here's the list of new underwater photos:

[*]9 of invertebrates from the Brule

[*]5 of invertebrates from the Eighteenmile Creek

[*]12 of invertebrates from the Namekagon

[*]1 cool picture of a sculpin

I also got a neat picture of a newborn steelhead fry, and made one new desktop background.

Below are a couple of my favorites (shrunk to fit the forum):

My next goal is to get better pictures of clinging mayfly nymphs and stoneflies, and to try to get some of damselfly nymphs, dragonfly nymphs, and other somewhat less common critters that have so far eluded my underwater photography. It turns out that this is kind of tricky, because the nimble clinging mayfly nymphs and stoneflies tend to see or feel me coming and scurry to the undersides of their rocks before I'm close enough to get a picture. If you watch the rocks in front of you closely next time you're on the stream (particularly the light-colored ones, since it's easier to see the dark bugs) you may notice them scurrying for cover.

Jason,

your pictures seem to be improving. Are you getting your head in the water now or still just dipping the camera and housing and hoping for the best?

I keep meaning to get my camera into the trout river at the bottom of my road but haven't quite gathered the courage to don Drysuit, mask and snorkel to do it. I must do it soon otherwise I'll miss the opportunity.

I'm getting some better pictures now because the water's warm enough (up in the 40s/50s now instead of 33) that I can stand to take some time and try to locate stuff to photograph instead of just blindly taking pics of rocks and sticks and hoping for the best. I'm still not getting underwater... that would be really impractical in shallow trout streams anyway. But I'm becoming quite good at spotting these things by peering down into the water from above now.

Ralph Cutter has an excellent book called the "Sierra Trout Guide" where he talks a LOT about underwater trout stream photography. You should definitely check it out.

Cheers

James