“A couple of weeks ago on the Suwannee I saw a snapper that was as large as a vehicle tire. This is not hyperbole”
Common Snapper or Alligator Snapper?
Alligator snappers can get huge; the record is close to 250lbs and 3 feet across.
Common snappers usually max out at about 45lbs and 20 inches for males, and that is pretty much the record in Maryland. The non-captive common snapper record (found in New Hampshire IIRC) is/was 22 inches and 75lbs.
But years ago I was leading a trip down the upper Pocomoke, a blackwater cypress river. I came around a turn and there was a massive turtle part way up a sand/mud bank. It was not moving and its shell was covered in moss and lichen. We do not have alligator snappers in Maryland. My first thought was “What the heck is a sea turtle doing way up here?”, but we were far above the tidal reach.
It was easily the size of a large trashcan lid, and I thought it was dead. I put the bow of my canoe beside it, and touched it with my paddle. It started backing into the water and I tried to brace it there with my paddle to hold it so the other folks could see.
It was like trying to keep a bulldozer from backing up, all it lacked was the beep-beep-beep sound. I wish I had tried harder, or at least taken a photo with my paddle blade in the frame for size reference, but there was no stopping that behemoth.
Really wish I had some reference for size. I told a herpetologist friend about that encounter and he was miffed that I had nothing but memory to go by.
We have a couple of captive Reeves turtles in large aquaria. They were hatchlings when we got them, the size of a fingernail, and even then were escape artist climbers. One morning when we first got them I looked out the sliding glass doors and saw one, on the outside of the house, apparently trying to get back in.
How the heck? It was a baby snapper. Why he was clawing at the glass trying to get inside I do not know. It was cute as a button, but I did know I didn’t want a captive snapper, they are filthy, so I took him back into the woods nearer the stream.