We use to pen them for a week minimum and feed them lettuce, celery, and other vegetable scraps as well to clean them out. They typically lost a little weight in the process. We also had a tub of water they could get in and out of that we cleaned on a regular basis to get the mud out of them. We'd shoot them in the head with a 22, then seperate the shells. We'd part out the neck, loins, legs, and tail. We'd scrape down the parts and get the skin off of them then debone it and chunk it into oven bags and bake them with veggies like an oven potroast. I haven't helped do a snapper since I was a kid. I sure don't miss all the scraping even though they were good eating 
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