Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have had turtles since i was 2 years old and cought my first snapper when i was 5 he was on a dirt road in an area with no swamps or ponds. he must have bin some ones pet being he was really freindly he was about 6 inches long and kept him in a pond i had in my back yard he went and came as he pleased. i cought my first big snapper when i was 12 on my birthday it was the biggest snapper i have cought to date she was 71 pounds and and it took me over an hour to catch. she was on land comeing back from laying eggs when i found her crossing a path in the woods i grabed her by the tail and put her in a big green bucket they use to keep leaves in and showed my father and uncle what i cought took a ton of pictures then let her go on her way. i had bin trying to catch her since i was 8 and cept seeing her till i was 15 when i moved i havent gone back to were she lives but its still there couse a friend of mine works down the street. i have cought about 3-400 snappers in my life. was just wondering how u guys got your first and how meny u might have cought in your life.
Crazycody

i didn't actually catch the one that i have. I just got my very first turtle (a common snapper) from the vet hospital that my mother works at. the turtle was brought into the clinic after it was found wandering the streets of a town here in Washington state where i live. the vet didn't know what to do w/ it and was going to release it into a pond, but since they are not native around here i figured that it was going to die anyway because it gets pretty cold around here. SO i took him in, got a 55 gallon tank and set it up. i am guessing he is only 2-3 years old, he weighs just under a pound, (15oz). so that is how i got my first snapper.

i have a snapper that is about 4-6 years old that is 20 pounds i am realeaseing tomarrow in washington state there not native and was mostlikely some ones pet that got out did u see if it was eny ones? also letting it go would be really bad they can handel the cold but they would eat out the other species snapper eat everything snakes, frogs, fish, muskrats, small beavers, even smaller turtles they eat alot of other stuff as well. so letting it go would be really really bad.
Crazycody

I caught my first when I was 12. That was just a few years of ago. I'm 16 now. My dad gave strict rules for snakes and turtles and spiders. I did not catch my first snake till I was about 11 or so. But when I was small, just on my knees crawling after frogs and lizards and stuff.
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Justin

I started catching snappers back in 1989 when i was 12 years old. Me and my buddies would spend all day in a local river, and then over to a lake. I cant remember my first snapper, but the most memorable were two gigantic specimens caught in 1993.

The carapace lengths were 19 & 20 inches, respectively. I exaggerate not, but unfortunately there were no cameras on hand to document the turtles. From that moment, I became seriously interested in snappers, and have been keeping, studying, & capturing them ever since. Years later, I came upon the carcass of one of the giant turtles on the banks of the river. Im sure it had died of natural causes after probably 50 years of life.

~Mike~

the biggest I have seen was when I was 8. It had to be at leats 18 -19 inche length. My mom was with me andI also had no camera, I did not even catch it. We saw it on the road and stopped and we attempted to catch in but that was my first true snapper experience and it scared me and we just drove off after 1 big strike that it hoped off the ground.
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Justin

I believe some of you are overestimating the sizes, this happens very often, especially in memory... And also the measurment type varies a lot, only the Straight line Carapace length counts in this case and the current record is 19.7 inch vor C.serpentina serpentina, even after deep research no bigger specimen was verified! Even though many people claimed the snapper they have seen was 20inch in the end it turned out to be 15", which of course is still huge, but not record size, it is so easy to overestimate the real size in this species. Sorry, real 19inch specimens are EXTREMELY RARE!

Literature:
Blanck, T. (2004): New record size for the common snapping turtle, Chelydra serpentina serpentina (LINNAEUS, 1758) Sacalia 3(2): P. 5-12

I've cought some big ones crossing the roads. There are so many little stock ponds and such around, that I see quite a few.
I saw one of the fattest ones ever about 2 weeks ago while fishing. It wasnt the biggest shell size I've seen or cought, but its head and legs were huge! Very exagerated in size compared to its shell. I figured it was a old female.
As a side note, I catch several honest 6 foot black rat snakes every year. There plentiful round here too.

i have been catching snapping turtles for fun and food for as long as i can remember. being raised cajun by cajuns, snappers (common and alligator) were prized as food. though nowadays i catch them either to get them out of the road, or to save them from precarious situations. i currently house two common snappers, one baby-prolly two yrs old, and one five pounder-prolly 4-6 yrs old. it would be hard for me to recall my first catch, but i have vivid memories of the big'uns. prolly the biggest common i caught was in a creek adjacent to my high school campus, a big female-prolly 30 lbs. the biggest i ever caught would be an alligator snapper i hand-caught in the shallows of Lake Bisteneau-just over 110 lbs. at the time he weighed more than i did LOL. my gramma taught us to catch them by walking the shallows, and recognizing the feel of their backs, then reaching under the water and getting them by the front and rear of their shells and lifting them straight up so they couldnt fight back by grabbing bottom. even alligator snappers are very docile while underwater, and wont snap until they are out of the water. of course back then, we caught them for food, and lawd are they good. nowadays, tho, i'll only put hands on one to get it out of the road.