Heart Attack Yak

Went to Brushy Creek Lake yesterday for my first trip ever fishing out of a kayak! The fish were definetly biting and all was going well until about noon... I decided to hang my foot over the side of the boat cause it was pretty hot and the water looked nice. Well I guess my foot looked nice because about 15 minites later a cotton mouth swims across my foot! Took everything I had to remain calm until I got my paddle. Couple wacks later he was on his way and I was on mine, but with my foot in the boat. Lesson learned...

Actually you were just fine. Cottonmouth aggression might be slightly over rated. Holiday Inn...

It gave you a good lesson not to leave your feet in the water.

I have been yaking for a good while now and have been in some snake filled waters. But this year has been the first year I have had a snake try to get into my kayak. Most of the time they swim away or will just sit there if you don't mess with them. I was fishing a river in Arkansas a few weeks ago and a snake pulled itself up onto the nose so I tapped with my paddle and he swam off. Creepy yeah but I don't let it deter me from enjoying the water. If a snake wants to bite ya he will do on or off the kayak.

It's common for snakes to stick their head over the side of your yak and they will climb aboard if you let em.

Any land encounter with a snake is fine by me because I'm comfortable enough around snakes to either kill or or move it away enough to safely escape. I have had a few close encounters with cotton mouths fishing rocky banks before. So I like to stick to the cautious side around snakes.

That guy is a savage!

I have no desire to just let them board my vessel.

I would kill myself just trying to get it away from me, lol. For a cottonmouth, at any rate. Non-poisonous ones don't bother me so much.

I confront any hostile boarding party with a paddle whack

Snakes have venom. You have to ingest poison.

if that happened to me I'm not likely to have a heart attack but I might just poop my pants! My encounters with hostile cottonmouths has shown that they secret a rather nasty odor if they're mad and disturbed. So, if you smell something, it could be either-p-

Good lesson learned! pending an area, snakes are ever present around water, its a given, just treat them with
respect, usually they leave you alone,,,,,,, remember when i was younger folks did alot of camping went Lake Livingston
back in early 70's , 80's and remember one night dad and i running some lines, and snake fell in the boat with us, needless
to say, a paddle was a handy instrument to have that night...... i carried my .22 mag pistol for years in boats, live and learn,
2 swacks and snake was overboard!..... when we got back to camp my uncle asked why didnt we keep the snake for cut bait
later that weekend!....


keep the lines out!....

Over the years I got to know several of the old guides on Caddo Lake; one of them told me this story about a guy he was guiding. They were going into the Turtle shell and the guide was busy taking a bird's nest out of this fellor's reel; the big flat bottom boat slid up under some cypress limbs and this big moccasin gets knocked into the boat. Before the guide could say anything the fellow he was guiding whipped out his automatic 9 mm and commences to shoot at the snake. The snake is bewildered by the noise and he is trying to escape, inadvertantly scooting right toward the shooter, who blazes away as he hops around the front deck and tries to climb up on the elevated seat. The snake goes over the side, the fellow is on his knees in the elevated seat, gun still smoking, and the guide is watching water squirt thru the holes in the boat. Hearing the story, I laughed so hard I almost passed out and on the way home I got to thinking about the scene and had to pull over to laugh some more.
The guide told me he had 6 holes in the bottom of his flat bottom but the fellow was good about it and paid him for damages. I guess he thought that if he paid the guide wouldn't tell anyone what happened.-p-

That sounds like something JB would do.

My brother-in-law was duck hunting on the upper coast in a time of year there shouldn't have been many snakes active. He was in a plywood kit boat when he reached in and found a rattlesnake in his decoy bag. He is normally on of the coolest / laid back people I had ever seen but he went totally schoolgirl with his new rem 1100 12 ga. Bad part is it was a borrowed boat. The guy he borrowed it from said since it was plywood, fixing the holes wasn't a real problem be he almost never got the smell out of it.

I have reached behind my back ( in my yak ) into a minnow bucket and grabbed a watersnake that was in it having a snack. Didn't take me long at all to have a flashback to my cussing days.

Potatos/Potahtos, lol. Both ways you're dead.

Kirk B.

Zombie that is hilarious, poor garden snake.