There are a number of variations on this theme, but the slant tank made for me by Steve Boshoff answers all my needs and you could make your own. It is an extremely well constructed and very simple devise that allows me to get pretty good images of trout flies from below the water surface, roughly as the trout would see them, or as they look underwater by shooting straight through the glass side of the tank.

Click in images to enlarge

From below the surface

Korrie Broos’s new X-Factor fly in the vice and below it, in a slant tank

Through the side of the tank. (Darryl Lampert picture.)

The principles of Steve Boshoff’s design are straight forward. A balsa wood cabinet houses a clear, roughly square plastic tank and a mirror that sits at a 45° angle to the back of the cabinet and to the surface of the water in the tank. The mirror is held in place by a thin lip of plastic glued to the floor of the balsa cabinet.

The slant tank components

The assembled slant tank

Thin lip of plastic glued to the floor of the balsa cabinet holds mirror in place

Water is added to the container and given a few minutes to settle. The under-surface of anything floating on the surface, such as a trout fly, will create a reflection in the mirror. This can be photographed with an SLR camera using a macro-lens, or any compact camera with reasonable macro-focussing capability. Lighting will always be a problem so I prefer to use flash. It would be possible to enhance the light by removing the balsa side panels of the cabinet so that just a frame remains.

Camera, flash and slant tank set up

I prefer the camera to be on a tripod

The back of the cabinet has a sheet of white plastic glued to the balsa wood to enhance light transmission and to act as a bright backdrop when shooting trout flies through the side of the tank, rather than at the reflection in the mirror.

Note the white plastic background

The dimensions of the tank are as follows:

Diameter of the balsawood: 50 mm and 100 for the struts supporting the tank:

Outside measurements of the cabinet: 17 cm wide, 15 cm deep and 22.5 cm tall

Measurements of the plastic tank: 14 X 14 X 10 cm

Measurements of the mirror: 15 X 15 cm

Width of the plastic lip to trap the mirror in place: 3 cm.

Slant tanks are available commercially from C&F Designs. This is a very simple clear perspex tank with a metal insert that sits at 45 degrees and is blue one side (for background contrast for through the side of the tank shots) and a mirror surface the other side. it is prone to scratches and in my view the mirror is poor.