The deformation of a hydrogen microbubble line and/or mesh in a viscoelastic fluid around a rising bubble was tracked from the original static position in order to discuss the mechanism of the typical phenomena such as the negative wake or the cusp shape. This new experimental method is essentially important because of the hysteresis dependent nature of the viscoelastic fluid. This new method makes this study distinctive from a number of conventional studies of viscoelastic fluids focusing on the non Newtonian properties and/or the instantaneous flow field. According to our experimental results, the flow mechanism responsible for the negative wake or cusp shape was attributed to the accumulation and release of the shear strain energy. Some residual displacements were observed after the bubble rising, which were almost completely reproduced as the internal dissipations in a Maxwell model modified with a non-linear spring. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.