A Fine Fettle of Fish : * Corona del Mar company is landing significant business in sportswear market with designs of “fish abstractions.”

CORONA DEL MAR — A clothing manufacturer called Fish Tales has a new angle on sportswear.

The company makes a line of men’s clothing printed with schools of fish. Instead of simply drawing a fish to scale, however, Fish Tales makes subtle “fish abstractions,” showing fish from a fresh perspective.

“It’s like taking a fish and looking at it through a microscope or a telescope,” said Fish Tales co-owner David Johnson. “We either blow it up or shrink it.”

Fish Tales will enlarge or shrink an accurate rendition of a fish so that at first glance one doesn’t see a fish at all.

“You look at this print and you almost don’t see a marlin,” says Johnson, holding up a robe printed with a sea of jumping marlin.

“See him arcing back here? See his girlfriend?” he jokes.

The trout print has just the fish’s rainbow scales repeated over and over so they look like waves. Only those who recognize a trout’s markings would suspect it’s fish they’re looking at.

“These prints are not your typical paisleys, florals and palms. Those have been beaten to death,” Johnson says.

The prints often incorporate just one feature of the fish, rather than the whole body. For example, they drew only the top dorsal fin of the sailfish, then “put it on its side so it looks like a sailboat,” says Johnson’s partner, Tom Casey.

Some prints look as if the fish were viewed from a kaleidoscope or photographed from above. Fish Tales’ leopard shark print offers an aerial view of the spotted fish.

“It’s as if you’re in a boat looking down at him,” Johnson says.

Every print has a miniature picture of the whole fish tucked into the design to help identify the fish.

While the prints remain true to the fish’s actual markings, Casey and Johnson admit to exercising “poetic license” when it comes to body colors.

Occasionally a “fish fanatic” will object to the teals and pinks that find their way into the prints, but “that’s what makes it sell,” Johnson says.

Sometimes they have to fish around for the right print.

They don’t want to enlarge the drawing of the fish so much that it becomes unrecognizable. Their first pattern of a lion fish was blown up so big it ended up an abstract mass of dots. The print looked more, well, fishy when they shrunk it down.

“We want people to be able to find the fish,” Johnson says.

Fish Tales produces jackets, shirts, sleep shorts, robes, volley shorts, swim trunks, visors and drink wraps with their fish prints.

A number of higher-end retailers have become hooked on Fish Tales. The company now sells its line to more than 500 stores throughout the country, including cruise lines and Eagleson’s Big and Tall stores. In the past two years, Fish Tales has doubled in growth without the help of advertising.

Johnson, 31, and Casey, 30, have been friends since they were boys growing up in Corona del Mar, and Fish Tales isn’t the first business venture they’ve undertaken together.

Before starting Fish Tales, they owned a computer company, which they sold with the agreement they would stay out of computers and venture into a non-competitive industry.

Six years ago, while vacationing in Hawaii, they landed their idea for Fish Tales. After skin-diving off the island’s coast, they attended a luau, where they spotted a T-shirt with a spotty yellow, white and black print that looked like a Moorish Idol, a tropical fish they’d seen in the waters.

On closer inspection, they discovered it was just an abstract pattern. When they couldn’t find any shirts with fish prints, they investigated the sportswear market and decided they could fill the gap.

Both men enjoy all kinds of water sports, and they know their fish.

“We’ve been fishing since we were little grunts,” Johnson says. They supplement their technical knowledge of fish with books on the subject.

“We’ve gotten ideas just from watching fish swim in our aquarium,” Johnson says.

Once they settle on a fish and a concept, Casey’s mother, Tanya, uses her background in architecture and art to draw the actual prints.

They call their line Fish Tales because each garment comes with a hang tag with a tale about the fish. The Saddleback Wrasse, one learns, changes from male to female during its lifetime.

“People save these tags,” Johnson says. “They want to tell other people what the fish is all about.”

Fish Tales’ shirts sell for under $50, volley shorts for about $30, jackets for under $100 and T-shirts for $15 or less.

In Orange County, Fish Tales can be found at Newport Harbor Yacht Club, the Balboa Bay Club and POSH, the men’s clothing store in Newport Center Fashion Island.

So far they say have been very selective about outlets for their merchandise. They never want people to grow tired of fish.

“We want to be around a long time,” Johnson says.