Fish Gut Eating Snakes

Last Sunday my Pop and I rolled north

for some fishing and Mountain air.

The last thing I thought would take place,

is to be ambushed by a nest of hungry snakes screwing up are angling venture.

Snakes… I hate Snakes…

They were watching us

When we arrived and started rigging are fishing gear. A favorite spot on Lost Lake Reservoir for Pop and I to battle hard fighting Rainbow Trout. I had notice when we walked down to the bank nestled amongst the evergreens, someone had been there earlier, caught some rainbows and gutted them right at are favorite fishing spot. This did not bother me it is somewhat of a common practice, I prefer to put my fish on ice and clean them when returning home.

Pop like’s to fish with an open reel and bait, I like to fly fish because of this, I moved away on down the bank so as not to disturb Pop's fishing and prepared to enter the cool water of Lost Lake. Stretching the truth at the word "prepared", because I had forgotten my waders and was going in pants sans shoes and socks.

Walking into the water mud squishing between my toes, please do not try this yourself, broken bottles may just shred up your feet. However, blatantly disregarded common sense, overcome with strong desire to try out some new fly's, I had tied the day before. I walked into the water until it was waist deep.

Pop yelled at me a snake was swimming my way, I yelled back, “Ya Right”! My fly line moving back and forth overhead.

What I did not know

Pop had spotted a water snake swimming close to where he was fishing and thought he would have some fun with me. Meanwhile I was stripping line and was not at all looking for snakes that could be swimming right at me and WHAM!?!! A huge trout had grabbed my fly and was running like a rapped ape to the upper end of the lake. ZZZZzzzzz! My reel screamed!! I held my rod up high and yelled with Joy, hoping Pop heard me and realized the first trout caught would be mine (ha ha).

 

After what seem a eternity,

Roger! Me! Landed a whale and what a fight! Accompanied with some  awesome air acrobatics from the rainbow. The challenge really is trying to hold a camera and land a trout at the same time. Also it is a little tricky not getting fish slime on your lens be carful of that, rookie angling photographers.

So a quick shot of the trout and in the net for him. As I was looking at the trout and wondering how in the world a fish that looked so big just a moment ago, could all of a sudden look so small.

A commotion started up in Pops direction and a lot of bad noise was coming from around the trees and dense foliage. Yelling at Pop “What's all the hullabaloo Pop”!

Snakes to many dammed SNAKES!

Grabbing up my stuff and my trout, I headed to shore to see what was going on. Heading down the trail around the trees that were blocking my view, I turned the corner and saw the problem. Pop was smacking at a three foot water snake with his fishing rod and yelling that it had stolen his night crawler. The snake was rearing up and darting back and forth, I yelled “Hey barefoot man here” a little worried I was about to get bit on the toe. Pop said they were all over, as he eventually pitched the pissed off snake far out into the lake by a flip of his fishing rod.

As I watched the snake sailing in the air

Movement was happing to the left of me. Another three to four foot snake was dashing by my foot, heading down to the waters edge, it must have smelled the fish intestines that were left there and was moving towards them. Now these were not poisonous snakes, just big water snakes, but I am not a fan of snakes, and they were disrupting are fishing.

The water snake that had headed to the fish guts were trying to choke down an enormous chunk of the repulsive stuff.

Biting off more than you can Chew

 

I took photos of everything, might be kind of disgusting, as well as disturbing.

But Pop and I would have another fishing tale to tell for family, friends and we had the photos to prove it!

And then we got the hell out of there…

I hate Snakes!