I am tryin' to finish out a load for my buyer. This time of year a colder rain that drops the water temperature 5 to 10 degrees will shut them off feeding for the rest of the year. It has not rained much here for over 2 months and the water is real low in rivers, streams, lakes and ponds. The last few nights the temperature has been around 50 degrees. Shallow water cools much faster than deeper water due to colder nights. I fear it has had the same effect as a cold rain, last night I only caught 4 snappers out of 12 traps, all 4 were in one trap in a small farm pond completely out in the sun all day. Tonight I set only 6 traps, 2 in a stream about 2 miles apart and 4 in 4 different ponds. If I have few or none tomorrow they are done for the year around here. Last year they shut down on August 20 right after a hurricane went thru. Most years shutdown is between August 30 and Labor day. I have noticed in years past that if I happen to set snapper traps the night before the feeding shutdown the traps will be stuffed with snappers. Last Friday I set 10 traps and had 35 legal sized snappers, I hope that was not the night before shutdown!

Well I got 14 legal snappers out of the 6 traps set so they are still going to bait in. 5 traps had 2 turtles each and 1 trap had 4. Going to set a large amount of traps tonight to hopefully finish out my load.