Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am extremely bored right now so I will tell y'all a little experience I had with a snapper.

There's this big common snapper in my lake that I'd put at around 25-35 pounds. He's probably over a foot in shell length too. Anyways, I used to put sunfish(aka sunnies bluegills pumpkinseeds) on my fishing line and he's take them off the hook. One time when I had a fish on there for him, he came up and tried to get it. The fish kept swimming around like crazy though. As the turtle chased the fish, an enormous largemouth bass the same size as the turtle appears and tries for the fish too. The snapper actually snapped at the bass and chased it away. It was a remarkable sight. Oh that snapper got to eat the fish too...

Last summer a friend of mine was fishing and he saw a large disturbance in the water. It stopped, but then re-appeared a short time later. He described seeing something large break the surface, and after a while he realized it was a common snapping turtle. As it came closer he realized it was actually 2 turtles and they were mating! The male was mounted and the female was swimming in open water working towards the mouth of the stream that feeds the pond.

My friend stood in the water and as the 2 separated he managed to capture what I believe to be the male as he floated with the current. He took pictures of the beast, but the best part was he video recorded the mating sequence with his digi-cam. I would never have beleived him if I didn't watch the video with my own eyes. This excited us because we have been studying wild snappers for over 10 years and have never witnessed mating behaviour. I'm still pissed that I wasn't there to see it.