“Snapper”

This monster was caught off my dock at my cabin in wisc.
6lb test,photo’d & released.
Estimated at 40-50 lbs.
probaly been in there for many years.

Holy smokes, that thing’s prehistoric!

holy crap!!

Fun aren’t they. I caught one that big a couple years ago crappie fishing in snags. Took me awhile but I got it up. Just barely fit in the dip net. I cut the line as he was in no mood to be messed with and released it. Turtle are good eating. But I never learned how to clean them.

I caught one a few months ago and posted a couple pictures of it. After I cleaned it a guy told me how compressed air works good to seperate the skin from the meat. He said you make a small incesion and put in a small tube on the end of an air hose and just hit the air release button. He says the air fills the area between the skin and the meat, which is the hardest area to work on and get to seperate. Seperating the skin from the meat is 3 times harder then skinning a coon, its work to get it done with a knife. Just like anything else Mary you just take out the meat. There will be bones in some of the meat but if you want to debone it, its done just like chicken. I’ve got 5 bags in the freezer now for winter. Another tough part is seperating the bottom part of the shell, or stomach shell, from the top shell. I just used a big sturdy knife and a hammer and cut through the joint because it was the weak spot, it wasen’t that hard. A machetti would be perfect. I saved the neck and tail bones for vegetable soup, thier like pork neckbones. It is good eating.