Went to check out a new spot while visiting my cousins in pittsburgh, pretty good for an hours worth of bassin' in some new polluted waters! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4cSWbjb5no
i got around 15 fish today. Only 1 goood bass. After about a half hour of fishing i noticed a snake about 4 feet from me. That almost ended the day for me lol but i got up to take a pic and it swam away thank god. I was fishin one rod while i let my other rod just sit in the water with a worm on. On my small rod that I was using i thought i got caught on a branch, which i did and i moved my line from it and ended up having problay my biggest bass of the year. I was praying when it was on becuase i thougt my line was going to snap. About 20 seconds after letting it fight, it came unhooked....As soon as that happened i turned around and my other rod is goin nuts. I give it a tug and it feels like i have something on there that is too big to be a bass. I start reeling and knew it couldnt be a catfish becuase there arent channels in this river and i pull it up and it is the biggest eel i have ever caught.....I cut that away and then soon hooked into a nice smallie and some nice rock bass.
Work is slow again , so I called up the old man and we were on "Carnegie" at 2pm. I banged two right off the back on the yum frog. Then the bite went away(far far). We would find one here and there but the werent active at all. As were making are rounds I seen something jumping on bait fish and I threw the buzzy right over there and BAM a decent two pounder straight murdered it!!! My sixth and final fish was an 3.0 that just couldnt resist the buzzy coming parallel to a brush pile he was in!! Dennis closed out the day with two decent ones!
I missed about the same amount as landed but seeing how tough fishing is getting, it was a decent trip out!!!
Though the head isn't visable I do know it's not a regular old garter snake, more than not it's probably a harmless common water snake. If I were there I probably would have attempted to catch it.
A venomous snakes like a cotton mouth would have more than likely stood it's ground, if not come towards you. Early morning fishing in Florida when I used to go out fishing by myself, I used to carry a 48 inch snake hook, and just toss whatever snakes there was into the water and watch the gators go after them. A 2~3ft cotton mouth is to a 7~12ft gator is like a 10 inch worm to a big hungry Bass, the dinner bell is a ringing. Water moccasins come out though more often than not right after it rains or in the early morning for some early sunning to warm up. And they generally are known to stand there ground, sort of like there venomous and they know it.
When I had my nephew at college of NJ he got the biggest kick out of seeing a brown water snake trying to swallow a sunfish, that it had managed to catch.