Snakes

[mperry]

I have posted this in a couple of other forums and have had some good stories come from them. Anyone have any good snake stories. I have fished a few places around here where I have had snakes crawling all over me. I also saw the biggest snake one morning when I was squirrel hunting. Not afraid of snakes but that one even got my attention especially after I thought I scared him off. I am around 6 foot tall and that damn snake started going up in a tree. Raised up and caught a branch that I measured that we waste high to me. I've seen them raise up before but not that much. Seining minnows out of a creek one time and brought up about 5 water snakes. Never seen a buddy of mine move so fast in my life.

[c1bigocarp]

What in the world are you talking about? SNAKES! You must be trying to scare us off. I cannot stand the things! I killed one bowhunting one time out of my tree stand! It was at least 8' long and as big around as my ankle... Do not know what kind it was and do not care... Just dead and did a lot of powerful flopping after my arrow pinned it to the ground. Glad I was way up in the tree.

[mperry]

It seems like most of my friends are scared of them. Not saying that if one sneaked up on me I'd probably crap my pants but if I even think they are around then I'm ok. Stood casting off the bank of a small pond one day and just looked down and there was one coiled at my feet. I was almost touching him. He would not move and I wouldn't either. Went frog gigging one night with a friend of mine. He gigged what he thught was a frog. I thought it had awful small eyes. You should have seen him move when that snake popped his head up out of the water.

[jhook]

Jeeze awmighty! I had a Cottonmouth drop in my boat once from a low lying limb. I was by myself thank heavens. Nearly killed myself trying to hold the thing at bay with a paddle and get it out of the boat. Keep a very sharp lookout when fishing near overhanging brush or trees. For snakes and wasp nests, too. Cottonmouths can be agressive. I've had them swim toward the boat and nothing would deter them. I usually move on worrying they can slither up over the side the boat. I assume they can. Anybody know?

[xbht]

I was getting some crawdads out of a creek when me and a buddy stirred up a nest or something cuz 5 big ole copperheads scurried off all around us. Man trying to run on those slippery rock in the creek was classic. I don't run anymore..I know they will go the other way when possible..at least I hope so.

:D

Also had a cotton mouth swim near me down in Plattin creek in Festus.

[mperry]

I've seen a couple of cottonmouths at reelfoot. They are pretty bad down there. We don't have a lot of poisonous snakes in my area. At least I have not seen any.

[c1bigocarp]

Jeeze awmighty! I had a Cottonmouth drop in my boat once from a low lying limb. I was by myself thank heavens. Nearly killed myself trying to hold the thing at bay with a paddle and get it out of the boat. Keep a very sharp lookout when fishing near overhanging brush or trees. For snakes and wasp nests, too. Cottonmouths can be agressive. I've had them swim toward the boat and nothing would deter them. I usually move on worrying they can slither up over the side the boat. I assume they can. Anybody know?

Heck yes they can get in the boat very easily. Right over the transom! I know from experience. I really keep a close eye out when fishing in cottonmouth country! Those things can make me kill myself!

[mudwitch]

Five years back, my brother in law and I went to Nashville to see my folks.On the trip back to NW Indiana, I had the urge to shore fish a few lakes on the way home.We had made it to Indiana and I stopped at Hardy Lake. He kept telling me about his fear of snakes. I walk up to the shore, and they(those skinny little harmless watersnakes) were everywhere. I got to the shore first and scared em into the water. The snakes(100's) went into about 2 ft of water,stood with their tales on the bottom, and looked like a large patch of reeds swaying in the waves.As I moved down shore, more entered the water as I got closer. I kept quiet and fished. He walked up and started fishing. 20 minutes had went by and they lost their fear and slowly started coming back on shore.He at this point had not seen a one. THAN he says" is that a snake out in the water?" I said yea. It swam 30 ft from him and came on shore. He kept watchin and it came closer. He got nervous and started backin up. Than the ones that had been sunbathing behind him started scattering....,,....than he saw em.... than everywhere he tried to go......SNAKES......All I could do was laugh my tail off....there were 100's of em and every where he turned , and the "OH #$%& look on his face was worth it... I think..., we ain't been fishin' since.

[mperry]

I only live about 3 minutes away from Hardy. Seen snakes there but not that many. I guess I need to keep a closer eye out.

[CrappiePappy]

back when I was in my late teens. My best friend and I would go to a creek and seine Crawdads. The spot, where we seined most of them, was little over thigh deep to me. I'm 6'2" and my friend is probably 5'6" at best. We could always depend on getting a hundred or so "dads" from this one spot. One time we went ... and couldn't seem to find very many craws in the shallow section of this creek. We figured it was molting time, and the craws were all in the deeper pool. You have to realize that the shallow part of this creek section is pretty much open ... and the deeper pool section, next to it, has overhanging trees on both sides - almost like a tunnel. Anyway, we start running the siene thru the pool, and the water is nearly up to my friends chest and over my waist. He decides we should pull up the seine and see if we've figured right, about the craws being in the deeper pool. We start turning the seine and backing off from each other, to stretch the netting out between us, to see what we had caught. The net wasn't coming up thru the water very fast, so we thought we must have the "motherload" of crawdads. And we did .... except that there were 2 or 3 black watersnakes sitting right on top of the pile of crawdads My friend freaks and jerks his end of the seine back and up ... sending a shower of crawdads and snakes into the air :D There were crawdads dropping from the trees, a full 10mins after we were out of the creek and back on the bank. :p We both laughed about it, for years afterwards. But, we never went back to that creek to seine craws ... .............. cp