Turtle Soup

[bogan]

Gonna be a feast tonight!!!

[bogan]

Just joking.

Some blokes at fishermans island boatramp had this in their boat when we came back into the boatramp about 2pm this arvo.

According to them, they found it belly-up at the mouth of the brizzy river near the point of the rockwall.

They had called parks/wildlife and there was a rep onsite at the boatramp before we left (about 45 mins - good job), the turtle was still alive at this time.

Nice of them to do the right thing, but in that size boat, only 2 blokes, trying to pull that into the boat? would have been a struggle, looks like it would have weighed 100kg+

There was a huge amount of large vessels (container ships/tankers) travelling the river today, so I'm guessing one of them nailed it as they passed the mouth.

On a brighter note, it was nice to see the tangalooma flyer travelling at less then 10knots in the river

Edit: I got the info from the blokes, but wasn't listening properly while winching in my own boat, so if anybody was there, or, if you are the blokes, please correct me if I heard incorreclty, I was the one with the camera and you took my number so I could email the pics to you.

[Angus]

Massive!

What sort of turtle is that?

Angus

[bogan]

No idea Angus, I try not to catch turtles

[Angus]

bogan wrote:

No idea Angus, I try not to catch turtles

Good fighters man.

But seriously that tail and size, the thing looks prehistoric!

Angus

[chandler130]

ya never know the size of that old girl could just be sick of natuaral causes or old age

[Bassythekid]

going by its tail and the edge of the shell i'd say it would be a male

[Callop]

Hi guys, here is the story so far.

Went for a fish in the river this morning with a mate(Pete) in his boat. Tried a few spots and doing no good decided to try the rock wall at the mouth. About a kilometer past the last Port wharf and in the middle of the shipping channel we spot a large turtle. The big fella was not looking too good. He was floating bum up and was struggling to get his head up high enough to breathe and had been hit at least twice. As we got closer to him he would dive down a couple of meters and then pop back to the surface bum first. Made a call to Seaworld who got Qld Parks and Wildlife Service to ring us. We arranged to meet Adam from QPWS at the Whyte Island boat ramp. All we had to do was get the turtle to the ramp 6 kilometers away.

After a bit of fancy rope work we managed to very slowly tow him to a small sand bank so we could lift him into the boat. It took a lot of grunting and groaning but we got him in the boat. Adam got to the ramp 15 minutes after we did. He had a purpose made lifting harness which made the job a lot easier on our old backs. We helped load him onto the track for a ride up the highway to Australia Zoo's wildlife hospital.

Gave them a ring tonight and he has been named "Big Potsie". At this stage he is waiting for a full vet check in the morning.

Dave

[nadders]

well done guys good on you. hope the turtle pulls through okay

[Rocket75]

that is one big turtle! good on ya for taking the time to help it out.

rocket

[dhess]

Good on you guys for going out of your way to do the right thing for a magnificent animal. Hope he pulls through okay.

About a year and a half ago I caught a similar sized one at shallow tempest on a 7" nuclear chook. It gave a hell of a fight. Thankfully after about 15minutes I finally managed to straighten the jighead (no mean feat on a 6/0 TT extra strong jighead) and it swam free relatively unharmed.

Makes me worry anout them a lot as late last year I trolled a slightly smaller model up around Brennan's on an X-rap magnum 30. Still went pretty hard.

Jokes aside it was pretty distressing for me and the turtle. Thankfully all were released safely. Mind you the one caught on the x-rap did its best to bite my fingers off.

Have also had plenty of near misses offshore with turtles doing their best to try and eat my bait.

[wesfish]

Good karma will follow you guys for a while after taking the time to help out a distressed turtle! i helped one out about 3 years ago at mud island that had 2 crab pot ropes around its neck, it was doing circles dragging the 2 massive pro pots around, after about 1/2 an hour i got close enough to get her boatside and cut the ropes. it was the best feeling having her just float boat side looking at me for a minute before powering off.. i had great karma for years !!

[Do$tylz]

yeah Good onya mate. Keep us posted with progress on it if you can. Always good to read up on a good deed.

[Callop]

Thanks guys and girls. It was a big day out. After we got "Big Potsie" off to the hospital, we came accross a couple of blokes broken down half way between Whyte Island and Bulimba Creek. So we towed them back to their mother ship.

I am still not sure if they were pulling my leg or not but we dropped them off at the jetty under the bow of "his yacht".

Should have up update on Potsie tomorrow.

[Callop]

the yacht

[Callop]

Unfortunately he had to be put to sleep.

[bootyinblue]

Ohhh poop... well atleast it was done in the best of hands and not with the pointy end of some hooning boat!

[Jason1978]

Dang, real shame that

[bogan]

at least there was effort, i know most of us wouldn't have bothered

[Davo_Dinkum]

that's a shame

but better to be put to sleep then left to suffer .