Fly Fishing Insider Podcast
Better fish photos come from changing height rather than buying gear. Crouch, kneel, or turn the camera upside down at water level, keep the subject out of leafy shadow lines, and pick the foreground and background element before the fish is in the net so the lift takes seconds, not minutes.
Aaron Smith, known on Instagram as @mrwerbs, is a Utah-based angler and photographer who fishes stillwater heavily and runs a weekly open-door fly tying night.
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How do you take better fly fishing photos without buying better gear?
The camera in question is a Nikon D3400 bought as a bundle for about five hundred dollars with lenses, case, charger and memory card. What changes the pictures is height, not price. Shooting from a standing position with the camera in front of your face gives everyone the same photo; crouching, kneeling in the water, or flipping the camera upside down to get the lens inches from the surface changes the perspective entirely.
What makes a fish photo look composed instead of snapped?
A composed photo has layers: something close, something midway out, and something in the distance. Sometimes that is wildflowers on the bank or a mountain behind; often it is just a bush, some grass, or a branch broken off and held in front of the lens. Identifying that element before anyone hooks a fish is what makes it possible to take the picture fast.
How does light decide whether a fish photo is usable?
Hard sun through leaves puts shadow lines across the angler and the fish and turns the frame into camouflage that no amount of editing recovers. Overcast light gives soft shadows that are far easier to correct later by pulling highlights down or shadows up. The rule on the water is simple: get the whole subject into one consistent level of light before you lift the fish.
How do you photograph a trout without keeping it out of the water?
The fish stays in the net and recovers while the photographer scouts the light, the foreground and the background and tells the angler which direction to face. Then there is one lift, a small number of frames, and the fish goes back into the net and gets released. Having the whole frame planned in advance is what keeps the fish's time out of the water down to seconds.
What structure should you look for when you walk up to a new lake?
Inlets from a spring or creek bring cooler, more oxygenated water and act as a conveyor belt of food. Shallow weed bed edges are what Phil Rowley calls the buffet line of a lake, holding both the bugs and the cover, while rocky shores, dams and talus fields hold leeches, crawdads and minnows. Drop-offs, often visible as a color change on satellite maps, let fish move up to feed and drop back into deep water fast.
Why is wind blowing into a rocky bank worth moving for?
Wind hammering a rocky dam or shoreline stirs the rocks and disorients the minnows, leeches and crawdads living in them, and the fish know it. On a slow day, a wind that turns and starts pushing into a rocky bank is the most reliable signal on the lake. A leech, balanced leech or baitfish pattern fished along that bank is the setup to have on when it happens.
What research do you do before fishing water you have never seen?
Two sources cost nothing. State fisheries biologists will usually say when the bait fish are in the shallows spawning and pulling in larger sport fish, and will tell you honestly whether the access road needs a second inflated spare. State stocking reports are also online: with a sterile species like tiger trout, which live only seven or eight years and are stocked as a management tool, the stocking date plus a fertile water full of bait fish tells you when to expect a very large fish.
Key takeaways
- Change camera height before changing cameras; a cheap DSLR bundle and a phone are enough for good fish photos.
- Pick the foreground and background elements before the fish is landed so the lift takes seconds.
- Overcast days give soft shadows that edit well; hard sun through leaves gives shadow lines that do not.
- On a lake, look for creek inlets, weed bed edges, rocky banks and drop-offs, and prioritize a rocky bank the wind is blowing into.
- Rig 18 to 20 inches of 25 pound Maxima to 18 to 20 inches of 15 pound Maxima, then a tippet ring, then three or four feet of 3X to the indicator with no knots in that section.
- Color a white indicator black with a permanent marker when glare is in your face, or dye a batch black with grocery store fabric dye.
