When Earl "Red" Coakley can't get to his favorite trout streams, he takes out his pens and pencils and draws the creatures that live there.

Coakley's pen-and-ink renderings, mostly of trout and the insects trout eat, have developed a small but dedicated following within West Virginia's angling community. "Guys are buying my prints and are putting them in their dens and offices. That's really gratifying," Coakley said.

The 41-year-old Nitro resident, who grew up on a 300-acre farm in rural Webster County, said he's "still doing today what I did as a kid - drawing, fishing and hunting."

The farm's isolation forced him to find things to do; drawing turned out to be one of them. When he reached high-school age, he added woodcarving.

"Those things kept me pretty much under control until the military straightened me out," Coakley recalled.

After stints in both the Naval and Army Reserves, Coakley earned a degree in commercial art and advertising from Concord College. Later, at Fairmont State University, he completed "most of the requirements for an art education degree."

Coakley spent the years after college working at a variety of social-service jobs. Artistic pursuits got pushed aside. Then, three years ago, he got married.

"I drew a portrait of my wife," he recalled. "She liked it. That got me back into serious art."

The richly spotted trout he caught during his angling forays caught Coakley's eye. He began sketching them, and then began rendering them using a technique called "stippling" - using individual dots of ink instead of continuous lines.

"After a while, someone asked me why I only drew pictures of fish. I'd always admired the work of [renowned artist and angler] Dave Whitlock because it included both fish and the things they eat. So I started drawing trout-stream insects, too."

Coakley didn't want to rely on photos or textbook renderings of the insects, so he started collecting samples from the streams he fished and used the samples as his subjects.

When Earl "Red" Coakley can't get to his favorite trout streams, he takes out his pens and pencils and draws the creatures that live there.

Coakley's pen-and-ink renderings, mostly of trout and the insects trout eat, have developed a small but dedicated following within West Virginia's angling community. "Guys are buying my prints and are putting them in their dens and offices. That's really gratifying," Coakley said.

The 41-year-old Nitro resident, who grew up on a 300-acre farm in rural Webster County, said he's "still doing today what I did as a kid - drawing, fishing and hunting."

The farm's isolation forced him to find things to do; drawing turned out to be one of them. When he reached high-school age, he added woodcarving.

"Those things kept me pretty much under control until the military straightened me out," Coakley recalled.

After stints in both the Naval and Army Reserves, Coakley earned a degree in commercial art and advertising from Concord College. Later, at Fairmont State University, he completed "most of the requirements for an art education degree."

Coakley spent the years after college working at a variety of social-service jobs. Artistic pursuits got pushed aside. Then, three years ago, he got married.

"I drew a portrait of my wife," he recalled. "She liked it. That got me back into serious art."

The richly spotted trout he caught during his angling forays caught Coakley's eye. He began sketching them, and then began rendering them using a technique called "stippling" - using individual dots of ink instead of continuous lines.

"After a while, someone asked me why I only drew pictures of fish. I'd always admired the work of [renowned artist and angler] Dave Whitlock because it included both fish and the things they eat. So I started drawing trout-stream insects, too."

Coakley didn't want to rely on photos or textbook renderings of the insects, so he started collecting samples from the streams he fished and used the samples as his subjects.

"I've got a pretty decent sample collection already, and I'm adding to it all the time," he said as he lifted the cover of a small box and revealed several dozen glass vials. Each of the vials contained an aquatic insect, carefully preserved in formaldehyde.

Like most fly fishermen, Coakley devotes most of his attention to mayflies and their larvae. But he also draws stoneflies, damselflies and other aquatic insects.

Some artists put exorbitant price tags on their prints, but Coakley has decided to keep his works affordable.

"I know what it's like to be a fisherman and to love fishing, but not have a lot of money," he said. "I try to price my prints so that an average fisherman can afford them."

Coakley charges $20 apiece for his prints, which are 8 1/2 by 11 inches and are printed on acid-free, archival 65-pound paper. He currently has 30 prints to choose from.

"My goal is to keep my prices low enough, and to develop a following large enough, so that some day I get invited into the office or the fishing camp of someone I don't know and I find one of my works hanging there," Coakley said.

His ambitions don't stop there, though.

"I'd really like to draw a comic strip that gets published on a monthly basis," he said. He currently draws a quarterly single-panel cartoon, "Tangled Lines and Muddy Waters," for Power Fibers, an online magazine for makers of split-bamboo rods.

"So far, editors have been very complimentary and polite, but no one has signed me up yet," Coakley said. "I've really only been at this [fishing-related art] thing for three years. You never know when things are going to break your way. For now, art is a way for me to enjoy fishing when I'm stuck here at the house."

Reach John McCoy at johnmc...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1231.