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Tom Caraker sets and checks his fyke nets for snapping turtles in small creeks of the upper Choptank River.Turklin'. “Not a whole lot do this,” says Tom Caraker, who traps for snapping turtles from Denton to Cambridge. He works marsh guts so shallow that he needs a specialized air cooled “mud” motor to reach traps deep into the marsh. He catches from 100 to 600 pounds of snapping turtles a day. It's among the highest value seafood in the Chesapeake Bay, one to more than dollars a pound live weight. Tougher state regulations now require turtles to be 11 inches minimum size. “ I don't mind throwing them back, that's my future,” Caraker says. He sells them for meat and to aquaculture farms for breeding. “The meat,” he says, “is delicious stewed or fried.”
David Harp © 2013