Snakes are out

[Big Bad Wulff]

Saw quite a few snakes out this week. All were water snakes, thank God.

One evening I saw one swimming across the pond and the bass were hitting it like crazy!! It was almost scarey how hard they were hitting it. It sounded like cement bocks were beig thrown in the water from about 10 ft high! My only thought was they were either trying to kill it(to kill it) or hitting it hard enough to get it out of the water. I doubt they could eat it as it was about 4 ft long but i guess with bass you just never know. It was an amazing sight and sound. I will admit it scared me.
It could also have been the snakes scared some very large carp that are in the pond too and caused the noise.

[Wild One]

Sounds like fun. I also saw about a 4 ft. snake swimming across a pond I was fishing on Friday pm. Biggest water snake I'd ever seen. Nothing that I could see even looked at it though...I guess that is a good indicator as to why I didn't catch anything there.

[rrhyne56]

So far so good, no snake issues this far into life (knock on wood)

They seem to be quite happy to give me a wide berth as I am them. Get kinda hissy if you bug them while they are eating, cottonmouths anyway

[Joe Billingsley]

rrhyne56,
My Rule #1: Don't bug a Cottonmouth while it's eating.
Joe

[Philly]

Fortunately, I don't see too many snakes in this neck of the woods. I see the occasional water snake on the local creek. The one I saw last year was about 3 feet long. The only incidents I've had with snakes happen in Tennessee. Once while hiking in East Tennessee I was admiring a view and looked down to see a copperhead crawling across my boot. Instinct made me kick and the snake went flying in one direction and I took off in the other. The other two occurred in West Tennessee and involved cottonmouths. My parents had come to visit me, and I dragged my dad out to a local pond to fish. He was using a frog colored Jitterbug and a small cottonmouth became fascinated with it. Everytime my dad would cast to a certain area of the pond, the snake would come and check it out. After doing this a few times, it decided the Jitterbug was lunch and swam after it making a couple of strikes at it. It followed the lure right to the bank where we were standing, and I politely whacked it on the head with my rod tip to discourage it. It left us alone the rest of the afternoon.
The second one, I was an amused bystander. Four of us had gone to Reelfoot Lake to do some crappie fishing. We rented a couple of boats. I'm not sure if its changed or not but back then the rental boats had a round bottom because of all the sunken timber in the lake, and they weren't the most stable fishing platform. My buddy and I were fishing some cypress knees, and our friends were about 100 feet away under another cypress tree. We heard this yell and looked over to see one guy climbing onto the back seat and the other one climbing onto the front seat. The guy in the rear was trying to balance the boat while the one in the front was using a oar to poke at something in the bottom of the boat. After a minute or so, we saw a fairly large snake coming flying out of the boat with the aid of the oar. We motored over to them, and found that a large cottonmouth had drop out of the tree into the boat. The rest of the day those two wouldn't go near any cypress trees.

[SonOfMartin]

I grew up in South Texas. I've been bitten by a cottonmouth. NO fun. When people ask what it felt like, this is my answer:

Take a large screwdriver and put the blade in a nice hot fire for about an hour.

Now, stick that screwdriver under a fingernail and leave it there.

Nuff said - I have a strong dislike for snakes. I have the scars to back up that statement. Not scared of them, just don't like them.

[Big Bad Wulff]

Another one today...............copperhead.
I think I may take off a few weeks and let their 'coming out party' subside.

[Whitefish]

Up here (southern Canada) we've got six months of winter and, come summer, hordes of mosquitos that seem like they could carry you off to their lairs...but no snakes, other than a few garters....maybe it's not such a bad tradeoff!. Have to admit, they all give me the willies. I'll take frostbite to snake bite any day...TIM

[JZ]

well, all i have are garters, thank god, and not bad mosquitos

JZ

[Warm Water Fly Fisher]

saw a dead one, not sure what ist was. and i saw a small garter, hopefully thats all i'll see this year