Snakes

[mperry]

I read about this on another forum. Anyone have any good snake stories. Where I live in Indiana we don't really see a lot of poisonous snakes but I'm told we have copperheads and timber rattlers. I've never really had a close call but some of the places I fish I have had them practically crawling all over me. Just wondering if anyone had any good stories.

[90skeeter]

well too start it off i hate snakes with a passion.i was down at rough river about 3 years ago about too leave the lake and it was dark.while my father-n-law and i was strapping down the boat and doing all that i reached behine the motor too raise it and i be **** if a snake doesnt fall off the back of the boat right by where i was reaching,needless to say i didnt help with the rest of the tieing down

[rudeZ20]

OK everyone else has shared theirs so I figure I would do the same. About 5 years ago a friend of mine and I were fishing the BBC circuit on Green. Had been fishing for about 4 hours and the only bait I had got bitten on was a little bity crankbait and I only had ONE of them in the boat. You can probably see where this is going. Casting up towards shore I cast a little hard and the bait goes about 5 feet up the bank. I give it a short jerk to get it off the rocks and low and behold I hook into a 4 foot copperhead. Now the delimea was I need that crankbait back and it is stuck about 6" up the tail of this snake. My buddy in the back of the boat, no offense Scott, was scared to death of snakes. While I'm reaching for the paddle my buddy is really curious as to what I'm doing. I told him I am getting my crankbait back. His response was something to the effect of "not while my ##### is in this boat your not". Well I reeled the snake up, it was hooked pretty good, 2 barbs in its butt. I am swinging this paddle with all my might and this snake just wont die, probably because 1 out of every 5 swings was actually making some sort of contact with the snake. Finally I get the one lucky strike needed and the snake goes limp. I set the snake down on the deck, by now Scott is hanging on to the motor cowlng, and I'll be darned if the **** thing doesn't come back to life. It is now the guy and gal in the boat about 40 yards away are laughing their butts off and I can hear them over the loud pounding of my heart. Did not take long for me to get a couple of good hits in and he went limp again. This time I hold the head of the snake with the paddle and proceed the chop the tail off, flip the rest of the dead carcass into the water, retrieve my crankbait, and request that my partner climb back in the boat before he breaks my motor cowling. Did not catch crap the rest of the day on my crankbait. Have fun and be careful. Marty

[Danny]

"""Did not catch crap the rest of the day on my crankbait."""

Guess you should not have killed that snake...LOL

Hey, I'm really not normally scared of snakes, we kept them as pets when I was growing up, but copperheads are something else. LOL

To that end, I was out target shooting with a couple of buddies back in the late 70's. I made my best ever shot that day. We were done, and were walking back toward our trucks, which was about a mile away, BTW, we were on their land. Anyway, one of my buddies yell "SNAKE!!!"

Well for some reason, I jumped about 3 feet in the air... I was much lighter back then and actually did have a verticle leap. So I spun around, and saw nothing... and said some choice words to my buddy about the "joke" and just trying to make me jump. He said no, really... his voice was shaking and he was pointing about 3 or 4 feet from me. I turned and looked, and there was about a 48 inch copperhead coming at me. Now my gun is a 357 mag, western style, and while I was able to aim and hit most of what I was shooting at, I never could draw and shoot well.

This is when I made my best shot. I stumbled backward about 2 steps as I drew my gun and shot. I hit the snake 3 inches behind the head.

I have never been able to duplicate that draw and shoot accuracy, and have no doubt that it was not my skill that made that shot. LOL

So, I can identify with the cop that shot up his boat, and all you others. I've just been lucky I guess.... no fish todate in the boat. I hope it stays that way.

Danny

[Stonewall2002]

I know we have all seen snakes while on or in the water, but has anyone out there actually been bitten? What was that experience like?

Keep on chuckin'

[pontooner]

When I was a kid me and friend were doing the good ol camping out in the backyard thing in a small two man tent and you can proaply guess what happend. We had a light set up in the tent and were having fun doing kid stuff until I looked down and saw a snake crawling over my leg, luckily I was the one near the door and imidetley bailed out yelling "snake, snake" while leaving my friend who was scared to death of snakes trapped in the tent with it. He tore the tent down trying to get out and was screaming at the top of his lungs but finally managed to get out. All the screaming woke his parents up and all the neighbors started calling and asking what was going on because it sounded like someone was being killed. lol And all the exciment was over a little old garder snake but it's still scary when a snake sneaks up on you know matter what kind it is.

Oh yeah my friend hates snakes more now than he did back then.

[the_donger]

The worst I have is when I catch them. Seems they are kinda partial to minnows and I use minnows a lot. Well, one day, after reeling one in and as I was trying to figure out how to get the sucker off my line without getting chomped, my dog snuck up behind me and decided to take a bite outta that snake's tail. As you can imagine, a bad situation got worse, as the snake did not like the idea of being bitten. That snake wriggled outta my grip and up my fishing pole towards my other hand. I never did find that fishing pole, as I think I set a new record for throwing the javelin that day. My dog still hates snakes and goes and barks at them while they are in the bushes until they make a dash for the water. She then stands and barks at them after they are long gone, having saved me again from the legless menace. She hates turtles too, but never cannot figure out how to get at them through the shell, so she just barks alot and does not get close, which is a good thing as I can see a very large vet bill if one got hold of her. I also catch alot of ducks. Not mallards or anything like that, these have beaks like regular birds and flaps on their feet (not webbing). They like biting, good thing they are not big or it would hurt. I am just waiting for the day I catch something with 4 legs like a raccoon or an opossum. That would #####...

[mperry]

These are all pretty good stories. I've never had anything like that happen to me. Pulled a fish basket that had a snake in it and no fish, seined up a few when I was trying to get bait. That kind of thing. Have been surprised a few times but nothing like what I'm reading.

[Devils Horse]

Fishing one spring day a few years ago, the wife was alternately reading a magazine and talking to me about imortant things while I was trying to fish. (Why do they always do that?) A good sized water snake comes swimming along, and foolishly I pointed him out to my wife. She is terrified of snakes.

I said "Hey watchis" and cast my crankbait out past him. She said something threatening to me, but I was already cranking. I jerked the crank right across his back, and he got confused and swam right toward the boat.

The snake swam approximately 6 inches toward the boat and she hit me from behind like a line backer. In a blind panic she tried to climb up me like I was a tree. As a staggered around the front deck, she reached the top of me and her knees/feet pounded into my lower back running at full speed. Meanwhile she was using my left ear for a handle, crushing my skull in a death grip, and screaming in a bloodcurdling fashion into my right ear. By the time the snake got alongside, I was taking a horrible beating. It felt like some folks had ganged up and were using me for batting practice.

My left hand was busy trying to keep my left ear atttached to my head, my right was waving my cranking rod around weakly. I summoned the last of my waning strength and gave him a swat with my fishing pole. He turned and swam away. The little woman climbed down off me, slapped my hard on the back, and went and sat in the passenger seat arms folded. Prolly would have hurt except my back was numb.

I stowed the trolling motor, checked my ear for bleeding, limped down and gingerly lowered my carcass into the drivr's seat. The wife stared straight ahead, puffed up something awful. I reached an exploratory hand over toward her knee and earned myself another slap on the arm for my trouble. After a while I said (paraphrasing here to keep the board clean) "dang baby, you just beat the flying crap out of 220 pound man, and you ain't 95 pounds soakin wet". She thawed out after a while, and we laughed about it.

My ears rung for an hour, and I was sore for days. Nowadays if she's with me and I see a snake, I do a quick 180 and stay real quiet about it.

[mperry]

I think I would have probably just jumped in with the snake and took my chances.

[185tracker]

blacksnakes...?copperheads...?? watersnakes....??? they are all COBRAS!!!!!! i hate snakes the only good snake is a dead snake!!!

[charlie1]

When I was about 10 years old me and a buddy were fishing down at the creek and noticed a big black snake sunning on the bank. Well, we were both cub scouts and naturally read about how to use a forked stick to pin their head against the ground so you could pick them up. After watching "Jim" wrestling the anaconda on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom I didn't want him to be one up on us, so we proceeded to pin its head down. That wasn't enough. My friend suggested I pick it up, reminding me that all you had to do was grab it right behind the head and squeeze real tight. So I did. Then he (my buddy) let go of the stick. The snake was longer than I was tall. With its tail on the ground flailing around the snake started trying to back its head out of my grip with its "neck" muscles. I quickly noticed the snakes neck muscles were stronger than my 10 year old grip. The harder I squeezed, it seemed, the better the snake was making progress getting its mouth closer and closer to my hand, all the while smacking me in the legs with its tail. Being an idiot, I kept trying to do the same thing that didn't work before, squeeze harder. I sure wasn't going to let go, even though that makes perfect sense. As I began to scream, cry and jump up and down like a little girl, my buddy counseled me to "squeeze harder",laughing, as he volunteered to run for help, I guess because he figured the snake might just kill me. I politely suggested he stick around, because I was pretty sure he was going to die, right after I figured how to get rid of the snake, which by now had grown to mythic proportions. In a stroke of genius, I decided the best way to rid myself of the deadly beast was to just throw it as fast and as hard as I could - directly at my buddy. It worked. I didn't get a chance to kill him, he was running for help. I haven't picked up a snake since.