Jugging for turtles (or anything)

[Moose in KY]

IronKnees post on cooking snappers got me thinking about trying to catch me one.  

Whats the best way to set up a milk jug to catch them?  Whats a good bait to use?

Also, can I use the same set up for cat fish?

Thanks

[rwng]

Moose, are you talking about a gallon jug?  I wouldn't think that would be big enough. Anyway, chicken should be a good bait for turtles.

[01magnatec]

To get them out of my grandfathers lake i was taught to tie fishing line around the neck of a plastic soda bottle. Put a decent sized treble hook in the middle and tie a good size weight on the very end so the bottle doesn't drift a whole lot.
On the treble hook, bait it up with What ever fish is most abundant in the lake.  Usually sunfish or blugill!!
Throw it out and check it every day.  If you notice that the bottle has moved a long ways or the bottle is gone, just give it a couple seconds and your bottle and a turtle head will pop up!!!!

[pinduck]

One method we used when I lived on the farm was to take a basket made of hog wire weave a bottom in it of the same wire fence and weight it with a heavy enough rock to sink it. We would lower it by means of a rope tied to each side over the bridge railing that crossed the river by the farm. Then take a dead chicken, tie a piece of binder twine to its legs and let it just trail in the water. Then watch for a turtle to come up to take a bite of the chicken and raise the wire basket under him. We enjoyed many a bowl of turtle stew by trapping them in this manner. Its been about 50 years since I was doing this but as I can best recall that was the method. Maybe someone else can remember this method.

[Carl l.]

There is a lot of ways to catch turtles. I used to go turtle hunting with guys that would wade river's up to their chest and run their hands up in holes in the bank and catch the turtles with their hands. This is called graveling. They would catch 40 to 50 turtles a day. I didn't have the guts to do it, so I held the bag to put them in.

In Feb. and March we would punch for them. We would take a 1/2" pipe a bout 6 foot long, put a hook on one end. We would go to a Spring or wet place from the river and run the pipe down in the mud and you could tell if you hit one by the sound, then you would run the hook down and pull the turtle out of the mud. I have also set hooks baited with groundhog meat. It was tuff and stayed on longer. We only kept the hard shell turtles because the soft shell didn't have much meat in them. Turtle meat is really good if fixed the right way. Carl L.