Myself, DAMFISHERMEN and Bullprick were out on lake Dallas last night and the snakes were everywhere so i decided to keep them under control.

posted in the wrong section O.o

I'm sorry that you feel like you have to kill snakes to 'keep them under control'. Most snake are harmless and beneficial, and are more afraid of you than you are of them.
No, I'm not a PETA member, but I don't like killing for killing's sake. And I like snakes.

some of them may be be harmless but im not going to stick around to find out whether one is or not sorry

I have to agree here. I rarely feel the need to kill snakes or any wild animals unless it's in my house and posing a threat to me or someone else.

we cover 80 yards of bank....why should we have to worry about stepping on a damn snake.

Educate yourself about the importance of snakes

I'd rather have a snake in my backyard right now then these rats that are eating my food and making me have heart attacks at night when I walk around in the dark.

It makes him feel big. You don't have to worry about stepping on harmless watersnakes. If you think they may be dangerous and you wouldn't hang around to find out, why is there a photo of one? You should have been long gone.

Leave him alone while he kills harmless animals in efforts to build his self esteem (beats chest).

Hey aren't you the snake capturing guy ?

I teach biology and work with snakes in my free time.

I don't like harming snakes but I'd don't think I would really want to gout and find them either.

We capture snakes to gather data, but I would be lying if I said I wouldn't do it otherwise. I spend as much time hunting snakes as I do fishing, maybe more. It is a lot of fun. We have a forum dedicated to it. Check out some of our posts and tell me it doesn't look interesting.

Headed to bed. I have an appointment with some brushpiles.

http://www.fieldherpforum.com/forum/index.php

I know watch a lot snake documentaries and I can tell it's fun but dangerous but I guess life itself dangerous.

+1

WOW...I ran over a rabbit that was on a suicide mission once! Nibbler I bet you are loosing sleep over this?? You are grounded and can not fish for a week.

man i am losing TONS of sleep over killing a snake. but lemme tell ya it makes me feel big and boost my self esteem (beats chest)

What kind of snake was that? If it wasnt posing a risk, why kill it? I hate snakes, with a passion, but I'm not just gonna tear up any old snake.

quit pissing people off and use your time to find a job. If anyone knows of any job openings, Nibbler AND Damfisherman are looking for one.

I think most people who fish in a boat don't harm snakes, and probably don't eat the fish they catch.

But I fish banks too, and at 5:00 am while hiking and I see a snake that comes close to not looking like a garter snake, it gets a rock thrown at it. There is no opportunity for me to take a chance. Where there is one snake, there are more. I have a family and I don't want to be bitten by a moccasin 2 miles from the vehicle. If the snake is that afraid, it should take off. I don't sit around the corner waiting for one to walk up and scare the heck out of it.

The other day, I was bank fishing and stepped on a 4 foot rock, a giant black and brown snake took off. It was about 3 feet long but as big around as a baseball. Freaked me out. One bite is all it takes, and it seem those watery snakes are really aggressive.

On the other hand, I caught a 6 foot rat snake in my back yard and moved it down the road to a forested area. My kids don't need to be bitten by a snake, venomous or not, and get infected. I didn't kill it.

All I am saying is don't kill for killing sake, but don't take any chances when you are on foot unless you are the survival guy on tv.

p.s. real bank fishing, you are always watching out for wild things, especially in Texas - snakes, spiders, ants, killer bees, falling in the water, rock slides, poison ivy, falling on rocks and of course, hooking yourself. Stay on alert.

For any reptile and animal lover growing up in Texas it is saddening to see such ignorant behavior towards our native snakes. When I was a kid I found a brown snake at our ranch in east Texas and put it in a five gallon bucket. I was so excited to show my family what I found, so I brought it back to the house and made everyone come look. When my uncle saw it he said "thats a water moccasin." and grabbed a shovel and cut its head off. I was only 7 or 8 and knew what kind of snake it was. Of course I was very upset, and couldn't believe how ignorant my uncle could be, especially since he grew up in same town our ranch is in and has lived there nearly all his life.

There are only 4 real human-threatening snakes in DFW area: The Copperhead, Cottonmouth/Water Moccasin, Rattlesnake, and Coral snakes. It takes all of five minutes to educate yourself on what they look like...

http://www.creativemix.com/snaketalk/dfw/

If you run into a snake in the wild you should consider yourself lucky to observe it, I search for snakes in my free time wading in creeks and trekking deep into the woods, and more often than not I wont find anything. Never have I found a coral snake or a rattlesnake in Tarrant or Dallas county. I also have never been bit, and I've picked up a lot of wild snakes in my life.

Think about this... what if I went down to my local neighborhood park and started cutting the heads off of swans and geese or caught fish and just threw them all on the bank. Seems pretty stupid, right?

Poor Damfisherman. He thinks logical thinking is illogical.

Illogical thinking is drawing conclusions even with proper or informed data.

An example-
College student listens to his logic teacher explain- "If we asked a man if he owns a weed eater, then we can logically deduce he owns a yard, which means logically he probably owns a house. If a man says he has children we can logically deduce that he is straight."

The college kids thinks that's pretty reasonable, and goes home to try it out on his dad. "Hey, Dad, let me show you what we learned in Logic 101 today; tell me, do you own a weed eater?" To which the dad replies, " No, I don't." The Son's eyes dilate and his mouths drops open, "Dad, your gay?"

This is the same illogical reasoning used when you deduced the prior response equated to

I'm afraid you are all wrong...

You should have captured it live and used it for bait.

If you're gonna be outdoors you gotta expect wild animals to be around. Don't mess with them, they won't mess with you. Snakes creep me out at first sight, but then I like to check 'em out until they swim or crawl off. I catch big ole chicken snakes all the time at the barn but don't kill 'em unless they're getting my chickens.
To go out fishing somewhere and kill snakes or anything else that aren't bothering you and won't bother you is kinda lame. I used to do it a lot myself when I was younger. Maybe these guys will grow out of it. They do catch a lot of fish.

looks like a good snake to me!!! dead!

Wow, way to revive this from the long-gone dead...

What they were doing was technically illegal without the right tags, so if anything they are just posting evidence of their own misdeeds (not that it really matters, nobody really cares for the law anymore, especially if it involves killing snakes).

WTF? What does killin snakes have to with fishing from a boat or the bank. A simple solution if there are too many snakes for you find another spot.

Soooooo....you killed a diamond back water snake. They are harmless but will bite if stepped on. So would I. I see dozens of them when I go float tube fishing. They keep wide berth. They are curious creatures and will check out a lantern on the shore, and are especially curious of splashing sounds from a stringer of fish or bait bucket...they're hungry you know. A simple pop to the nose with a rod tip is all it takes to chase them away except during the mating season when they get kinda reckless.

You're an adult. Do as you please. When I was much younger I might have killed a snake or two, and would do so today if I had venomous snakes in my yard with children around. But come-on...
I find it humorous how many guys on this forum claim to be ready to go toe to toe fist fighting with a stranger at a boat ramp for looking at them funny...and yet they're afraid of a little snake? I'm just saying......

What a call,
You killed a diamond back watersnake. Completely harmless. My guess is that you preach conservation and gripe about people you see keeping the bass that they catch,huh?
I'll bet you are a bit sorry you posted this.
Bob Lovelace
Waco Texas

Bob, why resurrect a thread that was last posted to in October of 2009?

+1

i saw at least 10 of them today in my cove while fishing. as i got close to them they would leave in a hurry..... i have seen 3 cotton mouths in my years fishing and as yall know, i pretty much fish everyday. 2 of them i saw in one day (prob the same one) other than that the diamond back water snakes eat other smaller snakes. cotton mouths usually get no longer than 2ft and you prob wont ever see one as they haul butt when people come near. last week i grabed a diamond back water snake out of a small drainage ditch and threw it Angler Josh as he screamed like a little girl. the bite hurts a bit, but i bet a 3 yr old baby human would do more harm to you than a water snake. Good Job on killing it though. you are a man!

I am so tired of these "killling snakes" threads. I wouldn't even comment, except this quote I find rather funny.....



sure stuck around long enough to kill the snake, though. and take pictures.

Can someone maybe post a thread on how to determine which snakes are venomous or not and maybe which ones they might see at certain lakes, creeks, or rivers? We have a lot of bank fishermen on here and I'm sure it could be useful to them in the future. I hate snakes and get freaked out too but probably not as bad as josh. lol. If it's not a garter snake, I usually turn around because I dont know what it is since I know nothing about them. Just a thought.

Save your breath Pope..Its obvious there not the sharpest stools in the shed. That's more then likely the reason there unemployed

EXACTLY!

wow its a damn snake yall.....theres 10000000 million more !!!!!!

to me the only good snake is a dead on....

Corals are easy. There's a few species that mimic the coral so remember this rhyme : red touch black , venom lack. Red touch yellow , kill a fellow. The best solution is to leave any snake colored like that alone.

The other three native poisonous snakes in Texas are pit vipers. Pick it up and look for a small depression between the eye and the nostril. If you don't wanna do that, read on.

Nerodia (watersnakes) are colored like water moccasins (and are usually more aggressive) but they have round pupils and their heads are more round whereas the cottonmouth has a diamond-shaped head. Cottonmouths always reminded me of how a toad's head is shaped with those big bulges on the sides.

Copperheads look like a water moc except for the adult coloration which is compromised of dark (almost brown) bands and lighter tan. The head is usually (but not always) a reddish copper color but can match the lighter bands' tint. People might tell you that coppers don't get very big but I can personally testify to one that was 3.5 feet and made me scream like a girl.

Remind me to tell that story sometime.

Rattlers are pretty obvious , IMO.

The snake in the first pic is a Texas Black rat snake. They've got nasty tempers but they can eat their weight in mice and rats . I'm not downing anybody. Growing up in East Texas , every snake was a freakin' cobra so I understand the mindset. Just sayin' we need to learn the difference between friend or foe before we fire.

This should help with identification..

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/kids/wild_things/wildlife/snakes.phtml

it would not matter what kind of id you tried to teach them...i fished with them at oakpoint..and that night i caught 3 water snakes,they were eating dead shad on the bank...they thought i was crazy...i thought they were idiots...they stayed high all night long...1st and last time i fished with them...the only reason i went was to buy some abu 7000 reels from him

I have never seen a snake wave a white flag,,,,,,,,just saying

Yeah, that's what they said about the buffalo (bison).

They sell buffalo burgers now!

Wow. It's amazing how people can just go and kill animals for no reason at all. There is nothing wrong with snakes. In fact, snakes are your friends, even if you lack the good sense to realize it.

Across the many snake threads I've read here, one pattern holds VERY clear - those who trumpet the breathtakingly ignorant "the only good snake is a dead snake" belief lean heavily toward not being able to write a literate sentence that would pass in a 4th grade class.

Stuff like punctuation, capitalization, and how on Earth to deal with words ending in the letter "s" leave these people in the dust. THEY OFTEN WRITE IN ALL CAPS and like to, for some reason, put 7 commas between phrases or end EVERY sentence with 5 exclamation points. Paragraph breaks might as well be calculus to many of them.

Additionally, their powers of logic and reasoning seem to be lagging, especially when called to task for their actions.

It almost seems as if, rather than being born in a normal home and going to school, they instead congealed in a gutter or something.

In sharp contrast, those who do are offended by the wanton destruction of living things strongly tend to write much better. They seem to be the kind of people who would not consider a book a wasted gift. The kind of people who have fruit in the house even when nobody's sick. The kind of people who respect their nation and culture enough to bother learning how to write simple expressions in their native tongue without suffering a flurry of humiliating mistakes.

I've found this literate vs. semi-literate division to appear across many other issues, too. Issues much deeper than killing snakes. The differences between the thinking man and the dolt are, indeed, striking.

That is all.

hey archie,

just a snake! no biggy!

reptiles

And what is a reptile Atta???

LOL!

lol, shut up snagged! cant i just try to be a smart a** for a few mins!

i know that reptiles are cold blooded animals! was just messin around!

I think in upper bilogy class, they no longer used the term cold blooded but the technical term is poikilothermic

Sometimes, I kill when I wanna, other times, I kill when I hafta!!!!! I was congealed in the gutter, and "s"es scare the he77 out of me. So I use alot of !!!!'s and I'm nowhere as smart as Archie Bunker.
One thing I do know is that several of these local lakes have way too many water snakes. Ray Hubbard is absolutely infested with them. At some point, killing a few will not hurt the population.
I'd also like to kill a few cormorants. Those ignorant bast#$%s kill so many defenseless fish with no consideration of the poor fishes in inability to hurt anyone. 2 lbs a day. That's a lot considering how many of those there are. Even though they are protected, there are way too many.
When I come across a copperhead in a trail, I make a decision. Is this trail one that I might bring my kids down? If so, he dies. If not, and it isn't a trail I travel alot, he lives. I'm not much of one who could care much for what anyone thinks of my decision making.
CARRY ON!

Wow. If me and a buddy would of saw you doing this lame [censored] [censored] we would of beat the [censored] out of you. [censored] loser go pick on someone your own size.

Wow, the internet police and threats.

i personally dont go lookin for snakes, but if i come across one while fishin i will usually hit it with somethin so it will take off but thats about it...now if im out huntin, then its probly gonna end up bein a dead snake.

Need to kill us some more snakes.

What's the point in threatening people? We aren't the only ones that would kill a snake
On sight. Poisonous or not, we aren't going to take the time to find out in the middle of the night in the dark. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

So picture this - it's after dark, you're out bank fishing with your little one, and a snake crosses your path. Do you:

A. Shine your flashlight on the snake and go in for a closer look so you can identify the genus and species.

B. Smack your rod on the ground, or throw a rock or whatever you can find in the general direction of the snake.

C. Tell your kid "don't worry honey, if you don't bother them, they won't bother you" and keep moving.


For all of you snake lovers - the correct answer is B. - when you are out with your kids and it's pitch black out, you don't take chances and try to figure out whether it's poisonous or not. I'm not advocating killing every snake you see, but when I can't see it's going to be "shoot first ask questions later". If my tactic kills the snake, OK. If it scares it away, that's even better yet.

Oh, and I don't think any true fisherman/outdoorsman kills anything just for the sake of killing.