Turtle Trap

[Deitz Dittrich]

First off, please excuse my ignorance on this subject. I am merely posting this to educate myself, not to start arguments.

So, I went fishing yesterday on a local lake. IN a shallow water slew type area looking for largemouth. Something I was not so successful at. While fishing I saw something floating within some lilly pads. Its was a small maybe 2 foot or maybe 3 foot floating square with an open top that was sloped inwards. I could see movement on the inside of the metal mesh square.. Now I didnt count them as I did not get overly close, but if I had to guess, it had 20 painted turtle in it. It looked like the kind of thing they would climb on to sun themselves and then fall in and have no way out.

SO, my question is. Is this a legal way of catching turtle, is it turtle trapping season? In your opinion are these turtles going to be used for food or for maybe bait for trapping?

Again, I am not trying to start something here, I am just really curious.

Thanks for the help on this.

[motley man]

Reading rules and they must have a license to trap turtles. I would think the trap must have some ID on it to.

[Deitz Dittrich]

I didnt want to disturb it as I didnt want to affect anybody that was doing something perfectly legal. There was no tag that I could see, but that does not mean there was not one there, again, I didnt get more than about 10 feet from it.

[swampman]

You have to have a commercial turtle trapping license to trap them which they are not giving out anymore,I shouldnt say giving out they are 250$, I used to have one but don't anymore,my dad still has one.The painted turtles are used mainly for biological purposes here universities and such, alot of them are shipped overseas, china mainly.