July 16, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
99 
West Virginia Fishing. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
There are several streams that offer fair fish¬ 
ing in West Virginia. The nearest one to Terra 
Alta is Cheat River, seven miles away. Cheat 
is a good bass stream. Of course one cannot go 
into Cheat River and catch more fish than one 
wants, but for this twentieth century of fish 
waste the stream is good enough. We have a 
number of fishers in Terra Alta that go annually . 
to Cheat and find satisfaction. They are not 
very hard to please, to be sure. Besides little 
and big-mouth black bass, Cheat contains jack- 
salmon (wall-eyed pike) and an occasional 
mountain trout. It is a swift river, rough to 
the last word and hard to fish. It is said to be 
the most dangerous stream in America, for it 
is a deceiver. Cheat was named after itself. It 
is a swindler and cheat. In places the water 
seems only a few feet deep, when in reality there 
is no bottom for several yards. Those who wade 
it take their lives in their hands. Every year it 
claims a few old rivermen who have known its 
waters all their lives. 
Artificial lures are as successful in Cheat as 
live bait. Phantom minnows are the favorites 
and there is one minnow—a little brown phan¬ 
tom—that kills when all others fail. 
The Greenbrier River is another excellent 
West Virginia bass stream. It is in the south¬ 
eastern part of the State. A good place to hit 
it is at Marlinton, I believe. 
The South Branch of the Potomac is a fair 
bass river; in. fact, it is more than fair; it is all 
right for the fisher who does not expect too 
much. Strike it at Moorefield or Petersburg and 
if weather conditions be right one can get the 
bass. 
The Great Cacapon is still another excellent 
bass stream. Like Cheat, it can be reached on 
the main line of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. 
It is a hundred miles further east than Cheat. 
At Terra Alta we have a fine little lake—very 
little. It is a mile or so long and an eighth, of 
a mile wide and there are tens of thousands of 
yellow perch, black bass and sunfish in it. But 
they bite when they want to, only. I have fished 
all day without a strike and have caught one a 
minute until I had enough for any half-fair 
person. 
Terra Alta is 3,000 feet up in the pure air 
above the sea. It is the liveliest town of its size 
east of the setting sun. The people are pleasant 
to be with, hospitable and helpful. The climate 
is perfection in summer. Blankets are slept 
under every night in the year. In the nearby 
brooks are trout. A trout fisher will average 
enough fish to pay him for his trip. R. M. 
Trout in North Carolina. 
Linville Falls, N. C., July 6.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: This is the rainy season, when 
fishing is only an occasional sport in Linville 
River, which is kept muddy most of the time. 
The mountains have been so cleared that the 
water rushes madly down into the river after 
every rain and turns it from its usual crystal 
clearness to a thick reddish brown or yellow, 
but in a short time we should have a let-up on 
this inundation, when the river will clear and 
in a few days the fish will be ready for the fly. 
August generally furnishes plenty of good sport, 
while the latter part of September, all of October 
and most of November are excellent. 
The mountaineers tell me that the rainbow 
trout are “mossin’ ” now, and have been for 
two weeks or more. The warden of our fish 
association says he has seen the fish eating mOss 
and young water vegetation, and that when they 
get this food they will not take fly or even bait 
to any great extent. This season with the trout 
lasts until the latter part of July usually, they 
say, when the fishing will be good again. 
Notwithstanding these conditions a mountain 
woman caught one of the largest fish we have 
seen for months. About two weeks ago she was 
fishing with angleworms in a little deep hole dis¬ 
covered by her crippled son, when she succeeded 
in landing a rainbow trout twenty-two inches 
long and eleven inches in circumference, weigh¬ 
ing four pounds. It was a female and its flesh 
was almost white. As it swallowed the bait, it 
could not put up much of a fight and the woman 
MRS. MANN AND HER LATEST CATCH. 
was able to pull the fish up where she could get 
her hands on it and bring it safely on land. It 
had many wounds and some tackle in its mouth, 
for she who finally captured it had lost hooks 
and lines in previous efforts to bring the big 
fish ashore. 
One form of local sport that is not interfered 
with by the wet weather is the eel fishing in 
Linville gorge about six to eight miles down. 
The natives like to go down there and camp, 
doing their eel fishing at night or just at dawn. 
The eels are unable to get over the lowest fall, 
known as Babel Tower Falls, and at the foot of 
that little cascade they are thick, little and big 
ones. Frank W. Bicknell. 
A Successful Woman Angler. 
Clayton, N. Y., July 7.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: I am sending you a photograph of 
Mrs. Herman Mann and a 28-pound muskallonge 
that she caught on June 3, the second day’s fish¬ 
ing that she had after her arrival at Clayton on 
June 1. Mrs. Mann is a resident of New York 
city. She comes here every season and has been 
very lucky in catching large muskallonge. She 
is also quite a black bass and wall-eyed pike 
fisherwoman as well, but her specialty is fishing 
for muskallonge. She has caught more and 
larger muskallonge than any other fisherman or 
woman that comes to the Thousand Islands. 
R. P. Grant. 
Stream Pollution. 
New York City, July 9.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: While reading in your pages the ex¬ 
tracts of the new game laws in New York State, 
lately placed upon the statute books at Albany, 
H came home quite forcibly to my mind that one 
point supposedly controlled by these and previ¬ 
ous laws had not been given sufficient promi¬ 
nence. This is the pollution of trout streams 
by chemical works. 
This last spring I spent six weeks in Roscoe, 
Sullivan county, and from April 15 to May 1 
fished the Beaverkill, Willowemoc, Little Beaver- 
kill and many of the small feeding streams. 
About one mile and a half above the old 
covered bridge which spans the Beaverkill at 
the north end of the flats above Roscoe, a fasci¬ 
nating brook winds down between the hills from 
the northwest which the natives thereabouts call 
Spring Brook. . 
I had been told not to fish it, that it would be 
useless, as two miles up from its junction with 
the Beaverkill was a large plant for the manu¬ 
facture of wood alcohol and charcoal, which had 
killed off the trout, and by the pollution of those 
two miles of stream prevented the fish from 
running up in the spring. I was skeptical, and 
about ten days after the law was off I took my 
rod and up the stream I went, fully two miles 
above the chemical works, through which I 
passed. 
The day was overcast, not too cold, and the 
stream fairly low, and all conditions were ripe 
for a good catch. The brook was of ample size 
to harbor half and three-quarter-pound trout, 
and many a pound fish have I taken in streams 
of much less volume. 
That stream I tested over the full four miles 
in hundreds of places. With flies and worms 
I fished the entire run down to the Beaverkill, 
changing my flies repeatedly, but doing most 
work with worms. Not one single solitary rise 
or strike did I have. 
This seemed remarkable and I would attribute 
it to one cause only, the chemical works. At 
the end of these works is a huge basin dug in 
the earth, and placed not twenty-five feet from 
the brook, measuring about fifteen feet in diam¬ 
eter and how deep I know not, filled with a 
mass of black, vile-smelling liquid, the residue 
in manufacture, carried to it from the buildings 
in pipes. 
Is this the explanation; is this the cause of no 
fish on those four miles of stream, there in the 
very heart of those famous trout waters? Dur¬ 
ing that trip I fished a dozen small streams all 
about that region, and invariably found fish in 
them all with but this one exception. 
If this is a flagrant disregard of the law, and 
it would seem to be so, are our State officers 
asleep that such an outrage can exist in the 
valley of the beautiful Beaverkill? 
Herbert Jones. 
