Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1909-06-04
DIGGING OUT A SNAPPER
TURTLES FIND READY MARKET IN
PHILADELPHIA.
Season Is Now On and in Two Jersey
Counties They Are Catching and
SHINING Eels for Bait.

Philadelphia has now its annual gaze
of eager expectancy fixed on Hunterdon
and Mercer counties, n. j." said a man
who lives very near To those divisions
OF the Mosquito state, land the local
eatchefS are getting ready to haul out
cells and skin EN-. snapper bait Is what
those eelS are handed out and skinned
for. No other morsel tempts the snapper
ike skinned cells, and no morsel seems
to carry TO the Philadelphia gastronome
such satisfying quality of epicurean de-
llgnt as snapper.
Snapper? He is the big and ugly
saurian armored like a crocodile ruaU
rises on his four stout legs when he is
mad, throws out from its hiding. place
in his corrugated shell trip hammer
head at the end of a .hick wrinkled neck
and lays hold with a pair of yiselike
horny jaws onto anything he has reached
for. lie is known to science as chalydra
Serpenuna and to the sententious but
apt popular vocabulary of west Jersey
as snappin' torkle. He is the big and
ugly turtle it would surprise the New
Yorker to see in his home market.
but Philadelphia dotes on the snap
per, and spring delights have not all
returned until the snapper comes up out
of the mud. Philadell hia depends large
ly on Hunterdon and Mercer counties
for snappers. 1t isn't because the snap
pers of those counties are any better
than those that the subaqueous mud of
other districts yields, but the industry
of snapper fishing and mining seems to
have been systematized and carried on
in Hunterdon and Mercer counties as it
has nowhere else, and thus their snap
per supply is ever dependable.
Fishing for swapping turtles in the
sluggish and muddy bortomed creeks of
west Jersey, connected as it is some
what with mining, isn't something you
might put on the list of high class sport
but yet there are times when you may
have quite a lot of excitement along
with it when you get 40-pound snap
per in the boat with you. for instance,
and snappers Of that bulk are by no
means uncommon. A snapper such as
that isn't as quick as n bulldog, but he
can fight like it, and if you are inclined
to leave him unhampered he will give
you as lively time as you care to seek.
'frhe water in which this turtle fish
ing is done is about feet deep. The
depth of the mud where the mining for
| 'em takes place nobody knows exactly,
but the snapper goes down into it any
where from a foot and a half to two
| feet. Stout lines are fastened to stakes
driven into The muddy bottom of the
| is tied to the ring in a very strong but
not large fish hook The hooks are
| baited with chunks of skinned eel.
"The snapper lines are left to them
selves from an hour and half to two
hours. Then the fisherman rows out
in his fat bottom boat to inspect them.
1.-The Jersey fisherman then knows
| whether a snapper is on his line or not
| the instant he pulls stale out of the
mud, for if there is the lac won't come
| along up with the stake. The moment
| one of those Snappers feels the hook in
| his jaw he burrows down in the mud on
the creek bottom, buries himself and
stays there. If he only knew it he could
! have walked away with hook line. stake
and ait Then it is up to the fisherman
! to turn miner. He is equipped with q
! long and strong stake fashioned for the
purpose and with it he digs down, gets
| the end of it under the snapper and prizes
| him ont of the mud. Then he pulls hiA
up to the top of the water by the line
watching his chance now, the fisher
man gets the snapper by the tail and
lifts him into the boat, Once in the boat,
the snapper is in for fight, and the only
way his captor can handle him is to take
| him in hand after n custom peculiar TO
| these Jersey snapper fisheries and put
| the bride on him. A stout stick, an inch
wide and four inches long, with a long
/ SlflllS ittu 10 one emu OF II, Is htlN out.
The instant the turtle sees it he
| shoots out his head and snaps his jaws
on the stick. The string is then passed
along one side of him, under his shell at
| the tail, back along the other side. and
| then tied to the end of the stick at the
side of his jaws. Then he is bitted and
bridled. He is unable to close his jaws
on the fsherman's fingers. the hook is
removed from his mouth and the snapper
! is ready to be forwarded TO Philadelphia
and a market. OF course the snapper
could be knocked in the head with an
axe when landed in the boat and the
| fight ended then and there, but then he
| would be dead meat and might just as
well have been left unmoved in the mud,
for Philadelphia takes only snappers on
| the hoof, so to speak
| Thousands of swapping turtles are
| fshed for and mined in Hunterdon and
| Mercer counties during the season and
most of them are shipped to Philadel-
! phia. The snapper harvcsters don't care
to catch the very large snappers, for
| turtles weighing from ten to twenty
| pounds are the best. There is a tradi-
ton in HunterdOn county that once a
| seventy-five pound snapper was taken
| from one of her creeks, but Hunterdon
| county tradition is proverbially some
! thing of a whopper itself Philadelphia
pays sometimes as much as $3.50 a head
| for Jersey snappers, but the average
| price is IS cents. New York Sun.