snakes in the creek

read the thread about copperhead in the creek. i tryed to find but didn 't, i was fishing about a week before, on the laxawaxen river in northeast PA when my buddy said there was a snake comming down to me. i turn to see what kind it was, first i didn"t like the size of the head, and being coal black, yes it was a ratter. he came right to me as i was hitting on the head with my fly rod. i then wrap the line around his head and pull him down stream of me, he then made for shore, rattling all the way. we then got out when to the car for food, sitting there eating you guess it, he was trying to cross the road, so seeing he was my bud ,i cross with him so he didn"t get ran over. had to stop four car to do it. was about three foot long. but was rattling till we got over. flyman 3 pottsville

Does this mean you're gonna be singing "There ain't no SNAKES on me....." next year at the Fish-In? ;)

We missed you at bigdadyrod's picnic. There was only like a dozen of us there, but in typical bigdadyrod's cooking style, there was more than enough food for 50 people. We had a blast, as usual. Funny thing - seems like the guys from the PA Fish-In are going through "Fish-In Withdrawal". Sure hope he has another one of those picnics soon - we could probably get the whole gang to show up for Randy's cooking!

Was bike riding a few weeks ago with gzacckey (Gene), and we saw a pretty big black phase rattler that had 9 segments on the rattle. We thought of you right away.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...2Gorge0010.jpg

glad those SOB's ain't round here. we just jave small black non poisonous rat snakes and gardener snakes

I'm glad snakes and most people don't like me. Heck I only had my first bear encounter last week up in Perry County. :shock: I've been stomping in the Stony Creek Valley and Slate Run area for years and despite all of the rattler tales, I've never seen one. The bad news for flyman 3 is my ONLY rattler and copperhead encounters BOTH happened in Schuylkill County. ;)

So now besides bears and snakes in Penns Woods, I have to worry about swimming rattlers. Good thing I wet wade 90% of the time; it may help keep the waders from getting soiled if I see one "comin' right for me".

angler i miss the picnic, but i was feeling poorly hate to miss bigdadyrod's cooking,but i am not a big eater anyway.i have a L L bean pocket knife i wanded to show to you, about fifty years old. that is a nice rattler, use to kill them but i mellowed in my old age. on the laxawaxen years ago i had a yellow phase one by the tail, about five foot long my buddy don't like them, i ask for a stick to pin his head and he gave me one four inches long. had to let go as he was getting mad. we thought it was a truck tire cap till we saw what it was. fish glad to here that we thinking of fishing in Ohio for steelhead this fall bam lots rattler in stony and clarks creek valley. don't like copperheads, last ten or so years ihave been moveing rattler off the roads, so they don't get run over. can be lots of fun sometimes. still don't have a big rattler skin on the wall. flyman 3

Ed,(Flyman 3)

Was just thinking of you a week ago when I found part of a shed Rattler skin near the Pa. border on the Genesee. Didn't think it was a rattler at first but later a friend showed me one like it that he had. Then he told me that even a shed skin was illegal to remove from the wild?:confused:

I've had copperheads cross my path on the tee box thinking it was a stick. The most recent surprise was fishing my lake in the early evening in the dark with a headlamp and catching LMB and Brim when I noticed some movement on my left. I didn't move thinking it to be a LMB coming to explore my lure but when I did look it was a 3 ft long Mocassin presumably attracted to the brim flailing on the bank and the light? I moved slowly away and relinquished that bank to mr. snake. Next time I'll be more aware...

There is a state park lake not too far from D.C. that was made by the Corp of Engineers, dammed the creek & it's great for LMB, bluegill, catfish fishing, etc. The road on the earthened dam is so covered with copperheads that one has to wiggle the rod tip at them before every step in the summer just to get down to a spot on the deep water. A fishing friends wife, who out fished him regularily used the lakes outhouse on an outing & after about 3 minutes let out a blood curdling scream whilst slamming the door wide open & running, almost in her birthday suit from a big 5 footer that had made it's way inside! Seems it was in the fall out west on a small Colorado river where a whole bunch of baby rattlers were swimming in wet wadeable trout waters. Don't know where the mama rattler was, but the blind mans cane practice on the copperheads from back east really helped; even though it was easier just to flick them up on the stream bank with the rod tip being that the rattlers were alot smaller than the copperheads. Of course coeds sunning themselves on big flat rocks in the middle of the stream really didn't believe my stories of swimming rattlesnakes:cool:

SNAKES-Ive encoutered a few. Used to catch ratlers for the venom then return them to the wild. As a youngster walking along a dirt road at dark I picked up what I though was a stick---when it curled around my hand I didnt wait to see what kind it was. BILL