I had some time to kill yesterday, so took a ride in the woods to a great little pond. Caught about 5 bass , 6" to 18" All on the Zara I had on my rod. I had something take my Zara He took it straight down and thoguht it had gotten hung up, but it was moving.

I finally horsed it in and on the end was about a 25 lb Snapper!!! Luckily a friend was driving by with His kids, he turned around and helped me out. The turtle wouldn't budge any further than abouty 4 feet away, so I finally proded the treble out of his mouth That bugger was hising and just an unbelievable creature. Brought me back to the days of trapping them. The kids were freaking out at the size!!! That would have been a classic picture

Nice job, neve hooked one that big before.

If I had more lb test than 14 lb spider wire, that turtle would have been in my hand and on my report

I caught my first this summer on a Zoom Super Fluke. It was a little guy so it wasn't hard to reel him in. To my surprise he wasn't hooked he was just biting the back half and not letting go until his strong jaws ripped the back half off and away he went. I was actually really glad he wasn't hooked because I got to witness the cool event without any harm to him except maybe a bellyache when he tried to digest the Super Fluke.

Snapping turtles are actually fairly smart for a prehistoric creature. I feed my channel catfish every night with floating dry dog chow and the snappers in the pond come right up and chow down too. When I walk out the the pond in the evening, everything comes swimming over to the raft where I sit. Thats when I feed them. Come out in the middle of the day everything ignores you. They know they don't get fed. When the dog chow is all eaten the snappers swim over to the raft and just float in the water a few feet away just looking up at me waiting for more. Sometimes I have six or more from a few pounds to well over 25 pounds. The catfish and bluegills swim around too looking for more until they go down. If you throw in sinking chow they sit on the bottom and eat it on the way down. When no more is coming down up they come and stare at you for more. They can get pretty tame and conditioned to respond. Interesting creatures.