GREEN BAY PRESS (Wisconsin) 24 July 05 Snapper steals the show - An angler’s dream of a trophy walleye turned out to be a rather large and unwelcome snapping turtle. (Jim Lee) {Excerpts}
While walleye fishing recently, I found myself tangling with a 15-pounder. “Don’t net it!” warned Rick Geiss as I mentioned we might want to scoop up the deepwater denizen. “Don’t you dare net it.”
Normally, I would assume the crafty Geiss was pulling a bit of chicanery to deny me the buck in his pocket, the amount pre-established as the ultimate prize for hauling in the largest keeper of the day.
However, as a passenger in his boat, I had to agree with the captain’s order.
Actually, I did so quite willingly.
The “walleye” had a head the size of a Nerf football, a body the width of Gilbert Brown’s belly and a set of choppers a dinosaur would envy.
Somehow or other, between the unseen but subtly detected pulsating throb of a walleye ingesting my leech and the resulting hook-set, the barb attached itself to the underarm of a rather large snapping turtle.
Instead of the walleye of my dreams, the slow-moving snapper rose glaringly to the surface.
“What do we do now?” Geiss said.
“Well, first you take the rod,” I said. “I want to take some photos.”
Geiss reluctantly relented and instantly regretted his cooperation.
“I forgot,” he mumbled as he stumbled about the boat, “to bring my poles in first.”
The result was an epic tangle of lines, a disaster not ameliorated by my insistence on “getting the shot” rather than lending a hand as the turtle ponderously swam under and around our craft.
Finally, with the thrashing snapper at boatside and neither of us willing to risk a finger to dislodge the hook, we opted to separate from the unwanted prize and broke off the line.
The hefty turtle bore toward bottom and quickly disappeared, only to surface moments later and eye us menacingly. Then it silently slipped under the dark surface of the lake and never reappeared.
It was a fitting end to a day of mixed bag fishing.
…
I considered having a T-shirt printed with the message, “Rick Geiss took me fishing and I got snapped.”
Snapper steals the show