Fishing Tips Digest

While fishing for crappie, my grandson and I saw this huge turtle in the water. We both started casting toward it.

I was using a spinnerbait and got my 2nd cast about 2 feet past the turtle, which was about 100′ away.

I reeled in and it went over him, but placed my next cast in the same spot. I actually snagged him while I was reeling in. I was using my baitcaster rod with a 12 pound test line.

It took awhile to reel him in. He didn’t put up a fight but it was so heavy I could only bring it in a little at a time. He measured 30″ without his head fully extended. It was a soft shell snapping turtle. We were fishing off a dock so had to use a large net another fisherman had. He helped bring him onto the dock.

He looked ancient. My grandson was thrilled with the catch. I released him back into the water.

Here is a picture showing how the spinnerbait snagged him.

If you have a boat or decide to rent one, offshore fishing information is always valuable. While we will get into this a bit more in future posts, let me point you to Offshore Fishing Reports.

While we do occasionally like to rent a boat and hit the waters, it is easier to simply throw some fishing tackle in the van and head to a close by spot and start fishing.

The fun part about offshore fishing is you can get to some of those fishing spots just on the outer edge of the water lilies and catch some of the big boys. It’s also easy to try different spots to see if you can find a school of bluegills or other fish.

I remember one time when I was young, my dad, a friend of his  and I were out on a boat and not having much luck. We saw some fishermen pulling in a ton of bluegill and drifted over in that direction. We couldn’t get the hooks in the water quick enough.

The result was about 180 bluegill. My dad gave his friend the vast majority of them as he didn’t want to clean a whole lot of them. Just enough for our family to enjoy a nice fish fry.