I warned Sports Editor Michael Graybeal about using the picture last week of Brittney Rutherford on his sports page.

Brittney, who is a 6-year-year-old student at Mountain View Elementary, had, it was reported, recently caught a “21-inch large mouth bass.” The fish is enormous, and in front of Brittney’s smiling face, looks almost half her size.

My concern expressed to Micheal had nothing to do really with Brittney or her fish. Her pigtails and bright face, contrasted with the glassy-eyed lunker make you smile. From that perspective, Michael was absolutely right in the picture’s use.

It captured a slice of life in Ashe County. That is what we are about at the Post.

I questioned Michael about the use of length as a description of a bass. Not that I know anything about fishing, but I have been led to believe that one measures trout in inches and bass by the pound.

That brings up another question mark in the story of Brittney. Did she really catch that fish, or did an adoring father, grandfather or uncle help? We don’t know the weight of a 21-inch bass, but I’m thinking it is enough to pull Brittney right off the pier without an adult holding onto her overalls.

But my real concern was that the use of the picture of the cute little girl would lead us down a path toward endless pictures of children with fish they have caught. I have been there before at other newspapers.

The fish pictures aren’t really so bad as long as the fish are big enough to see. But truly, we don’t have space for every one that we might get. We do need to leave some space for Huskies and Silver versus Blue youth football results.

Worse than the fish pictures are the bucketsful of slain deer pictures that were once common.

There would be a local teen in his camo coveralls with the 8-point buck unlucky enough to be the kid’s first kill. The teen, smiling, would have his face smeared with deer blood, a rite of passage. The deer’s tongue typically fell from the corner of the animal’s mouth.

It was ok once in a while but not by the dozens.

Then there was the guy who wanted me to take a picture of him with the 40-pound snapping turtle he had caught out of Lake Greenwood in South Carolina.

I grabbed my camera and followed him out to an ancient and rusty Buick 88, the model that has a trunk big enough to fill with water and take a bath in.

He opened the lid of the rear compartment and there was a giant turtle too big to fit in a washtub. The fisherman grabbed the beast by the tail and the mammoth thing lurched forward moving deeper into the camping gear, fishing tackle and beer cans in the trunk.

“He’s still alive?” I exclaimed.

“Yeah, I tried driving that spike through his head, but he just won’t die,” said my subject.

The man wrestled the turtle, bleeding from the head, out of the back of the car and dropped him on the pavement. He knelt beside his trophy catch and smiled. The turtle hissed at me as I took the picture, revealing something of why he is known as a snapping turtle.

In the week that has passed since Micheal ran the picture of a cute girl and her fish, we have received no similar requests.

Maybe Ashe County knows what makes a good headline n “Giant fish hooked by little girl;” “Shark pulled from the New River;” “Photographer attacked by giant snapping turtle.”

Adamson is editor/general manager and lives in West Jefferson.