It goes without saying. The people that enjoy the most success in their field are the innovators. Like Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music, or Bob Marley, who helped created a genre of music known as reggae. In the world of sport fishing innovators abound. There’s Lefty Kreh, who’s “Lefty’s Deceiver” is probably the best known fly pattern ever created. It has been said the “Lefty’s Deceiver” was the single greatest influence in the creation of the sport of saltwater fly fishing. There’s a rock band named after the fly pattern. It was even memorialized with its own U.S. postage stamp. Another giant in the fishing community, Vic Dunaway, created a system of knots known as the “uniknot system” that can be effectively used to accomplish any knot-tying task that a fisherman may need. You can tie your hook or swivel to the end of your line. You can tie two lines together of equal or unequal diameter. You can tie a lure to the end of your leader and leave a loop that increases the action of the lure. With the uniknot you can tie your fly line to the reel, tie a leader to your fly line and then tie your “Lefty’s Deceiver” to the end of the leader. For inventing this simple knot, which really is nothing but an overhand knot repeated five or six times, Vic Dunaway’s name is engraved in the annals of sport fishing history.

I lay claim to a couple of creative milestones that if properly marketed could have chiseled my name in the placard of immortality, but alas I was too naïve to realize what I had. The first of these came when I was a young boy of only 6 or 7 years old during summer vacation at my grandparent’s house in Portsmouth. My friend, Wynn Evers, (who went on to be a well-known Hampton Roads radio personality) and myself were trying to emulate his older brother who had a garage band. We took some cardboard boxes and drew on them with a black magic marker to make them look like guitar amplifiers. Then I found an old acoustic guitar with no strings in my grandparent’s attic. With these simple toys we created the world’s first air guitar band. Long before the air guitar craze of the 70s and 80s. I also lay claim to creating several jokes that I later heard being used by stand up comedians or musicians during their live performances. For instance, about 20 years ago, I was lying on my back in a dentist’s chair. I noticed his college diploma on the wall was from West Virginia University. It occurred to me that West Virginia has been an innovator in the field of dentistry. They even invented the toothpick in West Virginia. Any other state would have called it a teethpick.

It was another memory from summer vacation in Portsmouth that led to my latest brainstorm. This time it’s an innovation in the only unenjoyable aspect of fishing: cleaning your catch. During this particular summer we had gone fishing on the Chesapeake Bay and brought home a mess of spot. Cleaning the fish the next day after church, I wound up getting fish scales all over my Sunday’s best slacks so my mother took them to the dry cleaner. The dry cleaner called her the next day to say he was unable to get the “dried airplane glue” out of the pants. Recently, I once again caught a large quantity of spot. There was no cleaning table at the marina so I iced the fish down and brought them home. The fish needed to be scaled and cleaned and I started to think about how I could accomplish this without having tiny fish scales flying all over the carport and my shirt. I wasn’t about to clean the fish in the kitchen. I recalled a plastic tray I had down in the basement which had originally been designed as a drip pan for a rabbit cage. It is about three inches deep and two feet long. I filled it with water and proceeded to scale the spot with a standard fish scaling tool. Not a single scale found its way onto my clothes and the bulk of the scales poured easily out of the tray when I dumped the water into the woods. I have single handedly invented a scale-free method for cleaning pan fish! Now there’s a large sheen of dried airplane glue on the leaves at the edge of the woods. Maybe some day they’ll use it for glue on my fish scaling tray commemorative postage stamp.