Heehehee - I would have loved to see a snake on a flyrod!
Yes, it is sometimes necessary to pack a gun when fly fishing. We have bears and wolves in Idaho.
heeheheh - I would have loved to see someone fighting a snake at the end of the flyrod. Yes, sometimes necessary to pack a gun when fly fishing. We have bears and wolves in Idaho.
Me, Dad and one of my uncles were fishing at Lake Guerrero when I was about 18. We had motored way over to the other side of the lake to fish when a thunderstorm started blowing in.
We were fishing with 12" black worms, and on every cast, the worm would land on the water, but the line would stay arced up in the air.
I thought that was pretty cool, so I was steady stripping line off to see how high it would go. My uncle turned and looked at me , looked at the line up in the air, and very calmly said, " You know that’s the highest thing around here, huh?"
I never reeled a line in so fast.
Another thing about that lake, the water was down about 15 feet that year, and out in the middle of the lake, all by itself, was the old church where the town was before the people were move to fill the lake. Dad and another uncle drove the boat right through the church, just becuse.
Kirk
I was fishing off a pier in Florida and using shrimp for bait. The first dozen I bought was pilfered by a pelican while my back was turned. So off I went to buy another dozen. I came back, baited my hook and cast my line. The same pelican or at least I think it was, they all look the same to me, came dive bombing off the pier and caught my shrimp bait in mid air and off it went. I looked down at my reel and saw my line coming off at an alarming rate. I cranked the real to stop the line and it looked like a dog coming to the end of a leash chasing a cat out of the yard.
The bird was unhurt and came back to the pier for another chance but never dive-bombed a shrimp again.
If yer really worried about snakes, the weapon of choice is a .22 w/ rat shot. It will incapacitate a snake at close range ('cause he’s not going to hurt you at long range is he?) with much less chance for unintended consequences such as blowing your or your buddy’s foot off which is a more likely scenario than getting snake bit. Might work w/ an obnoxious dog too. Now with them Griz…hmmm…
i carry 357 snubby with 2 357 magnum cartridges and 4 38 cal shot shell rounds. once snagged a rabbit that swam in front of my boat
I carry a .40 XD. You never know…
I used to fish at a lake called Marine Creek resevoir when I was living in Saginaw, TX (DFW area). A couple years back, the copperheads and cottonmouths were really bad out there. A friend of mine went out one night in his boat to fish, and came back less than a half an hour later. He said the cottonmouths wouldn’t stop trying to get into the boat, and at one point, he was beating on three of them as they were trying to get in over the bow. :-o
The one that really sticks out in my memory is from when I was a kid, maybe 5 or 6 years old. We were up in Rocky Mountain National Park, fishing at one of the lakes you can almost drive to with some friends of my parents. We were throwing salmon eggs for trout, using several hooks on each line. At one point, I went to cast my line out after putting a fresh loads of eggs on, and at just the wrong time, my mom’s friend walked behind me. I hooked her left earlobe, her left cheek, and one of her nostrils. :shock: All the eggs splattered on the side of her face made it look like she was bleeding profusely, and my mom passed out at the sight. I don’t really remember what happened after that, but I think that was the end of our trip.
CCI makes birdshot rounds in many of the more popular pistol calibers. I know that I have bought, and used, the stuff before. I wouldn’t count on it at more than 5-6’. Aim for the head, if that is at all an option. The scatter coming out of a short barrel is considerable. Stay safe.
Ed
Quade how in the world did that cottonmouth cast? That must have been pretty much chuck and duck casting. Next time I recommend the Belgian Cast.
But seriously, as nasty as those rascals are, I can’t say that I’d have done any different and surely won’t attempt to second guess your decision. Even close enough to clip off the tippet would’ve been too darned close!
Hey rrhyne. Believe me when I say that I had no intention of getting anywhere near the business end of that joker. I look at snakes tha same way I look at falling, Its not so much the fall that bothers me, but that sudden stop at the end. Same with snakes, they dont bother me at all, but their fangs sure do. 
Byt the way, what is a Belgium cast?
One day, I was pike fishing with my baitcasting gear. Used a big smelt, and I got snagged up, so I started to pull and tug, and it freed. So I’m sitting there for a while and I was watching the seaguls play.
So I see this gul swoop down and take this big dead…smelt, from the top of the water. Apparently when I freed up the line, it broke off the weight. So my smelt floated to the top.
So anyways, he wasn’t hooked, but he also wouldn’t let go. So I reeled him in to about 20 feet of me when he let loose. I was being gentle with him, since I thought he was hooked. It’s illegal here to harm one of those beech chickens. 
Thanks everyone for the stories. Some of those had me LMAO. And for you folks that fish in bear country, you’re all nuts:p
Shane
Well, this spring I was fishing a smaller stream flow and it was early AM, just rained and this little stream was rolling pretty good…but no more than 3 feet or so at it’s deepest so I figured…what the heck?
I knew it was that morning or no time to fish for at least another week so I hopped in and started a fairly miserable upstream wade consisting of much debris dodging and questioning of sanity.
As “luck” would have it about 1/2 hour in, I got a Smallie and that just egged me on to continue…until…
I felt something hit the back of one leg, then the other…then oddly enough the thing hit the front of one leg then the other and seemed to grab on and started gripping the opposite leg…being prudent of safety, I quickly jumped 3-4 feet in the air freeing this thing from my legs…goose bumps rising, chills and the willies setting in for sure.
About 3 feet ahead I saw a furry something of about 2 feet wash up and around, struggling in an eddy…muskrat, baby beaver, not otter like, who knows but after being hit with an animal, I decided it was time to reel up and go home!
[quote=""William Fitzgerald “”]
Try being waist deep in a Smokey Mt stream and have a Copperhead swim right toward you. No shot-gun just a fly rod to beat him. BILL
[/quote]
Yeah. Been there, done that in Georgia. Went between the legs of my fishing buddy (still don’t know how he was lucky enough not to get bit) and then went to the left of me downstream.
Before I had my drivers license I would ride my bike about five miles to town to meet a friend and fish the lake in town. We fished quite a few different places and ended up next to the bridge at the mouth of the white river that connects our town with the neighboring town. The two of us were both fishing spinning rigs with tiny torpedoes. My friend cast out somewhat next to a mother duck and her babies. I don’t remember for sure but I think he was at least ten feed away from them. Well one of the babies got as curious as a cat and found the need to check out the tiny torpedo. My friend gave the line a good jerk trying get the bait away from the baby but ended up hitting it instead. The mother duck saw this happen and unleashed some fury on the tiny torpedo getting extremely tangled up in the process. Now here we were, two kids about thirteen to fifteen years old with a mother duck at the end of our line trying to reel the thing in without making too big of a fuss and hurting the duck. It seems as we soon as the extravaganza began about ten boats decided to drive by. I guess they thought we had a nice fish. I remember being pretty embarrassed about it, thinking nothing to look at here folks just caught a duck and we will put it back where we found it. We were good young sportsmen who practiced catch and release after all and didn’t have a duck stamp anyways.
We were able to free the duck with out nay major harm done to it that we could tell.
Next time I will have to tell the story of the seagull.