Trout, Trout, Trout! Cover

For the cover of Trout, Trout, Trout! (A Fish Chant), I wanted to get as much reference shots as to how water, the side of water (as in a cut-through shot), and of course, trouts look to get it all as right as I could...

The images I found were crude, but I was on a schedule...and a photo-trip to the Tetons wasn't in the budget - so it was off to the bookstore for tons of fishing books.

Then I attempted some roughs that wrapped around to the backside of the book. With the Trout carrying the "weight" on the right side, it made for a neat landscape piece, with the classic red & white bobber floating behind the bar code on the back.

Then to the background/layers of colors.

Thanks to Photoshop, and the wonderful tool that is cloning, massive amounts of bubbles below the surface and drops above water were easily possible...