Cheat River Bass. 
Terra Alta, W. Va., May 7 .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: West Virginia’s new forest, game 
and fish laws, which went into effect a year ago, 
have brought good results. There are more 
trout in the mountain streams than there have 
been for several years. Not so many irrespon¬ 
sible persons are fishing, because of the written- 
permission-clause in the new laws. Landowners 
are not handing out permits to every fellow with 
a rod. The men who fish for the love of eating 
trout are not becoming bench-legged under the 
weight of written permits, yet fishers who will 
play fair have no difficulty in getting permission 
to whip a stream. If the State game and fish 
warden, J.* A. Viquesney, of Belington, will soak 
a poacher now and then in each county, West 
Virginia will be an ideal fishing and hunting 
country in a few years. 
And West Virginia is not a bad fishing coun¬ 
try, even now, and the scenery is great. Occas¬ 
ionally one gets a strike, too. What more could 
one desire in this tenth-gone twentieth century? 
I was out after trout two weeks ago with O. C. 
Crane, who owns a good many thousand acres 
of fishing and hunting country, and he is will¬ 
ing to fish every stream he owns without a quar¬ 
rel with the trout for not biting. We went to 
Wolf Creek, one of the prettiest streams in the 
State. The fishing began eight miles from Terra 
Alta. We carefully took out our fly-books, se¬ 
lected three beautiful flies each, looked them 
over critically and with due admiration, and put 
them back in our pockets. Flies are exceedingly 
handsome, but a good old angleworm is the 
thing when you are actually fishing. Down here 
we use flies to look at and talk about. We have 
learned to stop there. So we soiled our delicate 
fingers with a pair of lusty worms. 
We fished three miles of the stream and came 
away with thirty-odd adult trout. Better fishers 
get larger catches now and then. Dr. W. F. 
Dailey and C. A. Miller went out recently to 
the South Branch of Snowy Creek, which is 
owned by Mr. Miller, and brought away forty 
good-sized trout. 
Last week I had another fish. Dr. L. G. Beer- 
bower and F. E. Brenneman went along. This 
expedition was to White Oak Creek, owned by 
Captain Albert Shahan. We got up in time to 
see Halley’s comet and started well supplied 
with lunch, for which we were grateful before 
we returned. White Oak is one tangle of laurel. 
At times we walked twenty yards without touch¬ 
ing the ground or the water; in fact, it was a 
constant battle with laurel. Brenneman said a 
man ought to be a gimlet to get through White 
Oak Creek successfully. But we had a lot of 
fun. 
Flowever, the chief object in writing this let¬ 
ter is not to tell about Alleghany Mountain 
trout. It is bass fishing we are looking forward 
to with high fever. Cheat River is the stream 
and the little brown phantom is the lure. Men 
who know how to fish Cheat River have a posi¬ 
tive system of operation. S. H. Jackson, for 
A CANADIAN TROUT STREAM. 
Photograph by Frank F. Frisbie. 
strike, it is with a vim that astonishes. There 
is no hesitating or trifling. It is then the busi¬ 
ness of the fisher to keep a taut line, or it is 
all over. A two-pound Cheat River bass can 
whip his weight in wildcats—if that dear old ex¬ 
pression be acceptable. 
The bass season opens June 15 and already 
little else is talked about here. Several enthu¬ 
siastic bass fiends have almost worn out their 
bass tackle repairing and overhauling it. Every 
phantom in town has been bought, and the single 
gut that attaches the three small trebles replaced 
with wire, for now and then a salmon—or wall¬ 
eyed pike, perhaps it is, but we prefer to call 
it a salmon—closes his jaws on the lure and then 
wire is needed. 
Cheat River is a fine stream. And it is well 
named, for it has cheated many old rivermen out 
of their lives. Stories are current to the effect 
that there are holes in Cheat which simply can¬ 
not be fathomed. It is true that waders who 
venture in water above their knees take their 
lives in their hands. Cheat has odd ways of 
swiftness. All at once its gentle riffles break 
into speed that sweep feet down stream too fast 
to be imagined, and when you think you are 
seeing bottom, you want to watch out, for in 
places the bottom is from five to eight feet 
lower down than it seems. 
We are going to have a good bass season. 
Just how this is figured out I cannot say, but 
old fishers feel that there will be plenty of bass. 
This feeling keys us up to a high pitch and en¬ 
courages the sale of tackle. R. Morris. 
Frog in a Trout. 
G. M. Robinson, of Williamsport, Pa., sent us 
the following clipping from “Grit”: 
“Dr. C. M. Adams, of Williamsport, must be 
credited with having made the rarest catch of 
a trout this season. Recently while fishing in 
Rock Run, a stream near Ralston, he landed a 
German brown trout 12J4 inches long. The trout 
appeared to be unusually fat, but he was busy 
fishing and moved on until he had twenty-four 
fine fish in his basket. When the doctor returned 
home in the evening and was cleaning his trout 
he came upon the “fat” one and proceeded as 
usual. Much to his astonishment he found the 
trout had swallowed and was holding in its 
stomach a frog which measured a little over 
eight inches in length. 
“What makes the incident all the more re¬ 
markable is that with its stomach full the trdut 
should go after more bait, for the frog was 
really more than an ordinary stomach full for 
the trout. Another unusual feature is that the 
trout caught the frog by the hind legs and swal¬ 
lowed it. Trout usually catch their prey by the 
head, thus cutting off the breath. It is believed 
the frog had been inside the trout for at least 
three days. 
“Dr. Adams is one of the best fishermen in 
this section of the State. He maintains that 
trout, especially the brown or German, are gor¬ 
mandizers and eat much more than they need. 
He believes that one big trout in a pond is worse 
for the fish in that pond than a dozen fishermen. 
The brown trout grow about one pound a year, 
while the native brook trout requires three or 
four years to grow to the weight of a pound. 
Dr. Adams seldom catches a trout less than 
eight inches in length. He baits for large trout 
and gets as many as any fishermen. He says 
he feels that when he takes a big trout he has 
something to show for his fishing and has as¬ 
sured the safety of many smaller trout.” 
Large brown trout containing creek chubs of 
fair size have been taken on the fly, apparently 
but a few minutes after the chubs had been 
swallowed. In one case a 19-inch brown trout, 
taken on a queen-of-the-water fly, when killed 
was found to contain a chub about four inches 
in length. The chub had been swallowed tail 
first and was in perfect condition save for the 
marks on its shoulders where it had been bitten. 
example, is one of the original Cheat fishers. 
Armed with a twelve-foot fly-rod and a little 
brown phantom, he goes several times each year 
to old Cheat. The Cheat River bass, like most 
bass, have their own local notions about things 
to strike. When really hungry they will take a 
crayfish ahead of anything else, but when they 
are merely mischievous, the phantom annoys 
them to a point at which they cannot resist 
starting a fight. That means that they hit the 
phantom a smash, just because they do not like 
to see it racing through the water. When they 
