Since the first trip a few weeks ago the boys have been on me to take them fishing again. Our cabin with a pond where you pretty much catch a fish every cast is about 2 hours away. So getting there every weekend would be nice but not feasible.
So today we loaded up the Canyon cooler with a picinic lunch and headed the mile and a half down to the neighborhood pond. Of course they wanted to teach Mom so she came along.
Never fished the neighborhood pond and had no clue if we would catch anything.
My wife caught a pretty decent bass much larger than I expected. But that was it not much action so we headed home for nap time.
The in laws have a nice pond and we were headed there for dinner so we took the fishing gear for after dinner. Much like Arc’s boy ours love Octonauts so we work on the Creature Reports learning about marine animals. Dinners conversation was Snapping Turtles. So we fished after dinner the 3 year old was done after the first little bass was caught but the 4 year old wanted to keep fishing as they were biting pretty good.
So we stayed a bit more. I was reeling in our worm and noticed a little movement about 5 feet out from the bank under all the muck. Out slowly pops a pointy head a bit covered in much. Awesome, a snapping turtle just like we were chatting about at dinner. So I start bouncing my grass covered worm above it’s head to get it to raise up so my boy can see the snapping turtle.
Jokes on me cottonmouth strikes at the grassy worm. Wasn’t expecting that. My boy follows directions about 80% of the time. But he is 4 so the 20% is when he does not want to stop doing what he is having fun doing. So with the thought of self preservation as well as preservation of the boy I dropped the pole, grabbed the boy up under one arm and sprinted up the hill back to the house.
So after about 15 minutes of me slugging some water and trying to catch my breath we had a little Cteature Report about venomous snakes!!

When I was a kid in east Texas we would fish until we saw a cotton mouth. When we saw one we would real in fast, take the worm off and cast out past the snake and then try to foul hook them. Man what a fight, way better than a 5 lb bass. We were country kids so we had no issue realling them in and dispatching with a boat paddle, a stick or anything else we had handy.

I'll never forget the time I was float-fishing with my brother on an Ozark stream and he hung up a cast on root wad. I backed the canoe in amidst some branches, concentrating on the lure and the place it was caught. Almost there when I glanced in another direction just in time to come nearly nose-to-nose with a big ole cottonmouth curled and wrapped and draped over another branch. "Paddle!!!" I yelled. "Which way?" he asked, thinking I needed help getting further in to get his lure. "Out!!!" I nearly screamed. That was exciting.

When I was about 12 my brother and I were wading in a creek near our house in Kentucky. My brother was on my back riding piggy back. As I stepped up under the bank to get out of the creek a Cottonmouth nailed me on the right big toe. Hurt like crazy. Walked about 25 feet to the house where mom put a tourniquet on my leg a d flagged down a passing neighbor who was a honest to Pete moonshiner. He looked at the bite, took a big chaw of tobacco out of his mouth and a dirty bandana from is pocket and tied the whole toe up. Said he would be back the next morning. It worked and I had very little swelling. Not sure if the bite was just a defensive bite with very little venom or if the tobacco is a wonder cure for snake bite.

I was fishing at a fish camp on the St. Johns river in Astor, Florida, back in the late 80s. I was probably 6 or 7. My sister was about 14 and had a job cleaning gators for the restaurant there. Owner was a highschool classmate of my mother's and had a gator nuisance hunting permit (lots of stories from that situation from my mother/sister).

I had about 5 fish on a stringer, at the end of a dock there, and caught another. Pulled the stringer up to add it and found a water snake of some variety attached to my damn fish. I think I started yelling for help. Not sure exactly what I said, but I remember that I was not happy, and I was saying whatever it was very loudly. Several people came over, thinking I had fallen into the river or had been attacked by a gator.

I don't think they were as intimidated by this serpent as I was...

I remember them telling me the fish the snake hadn't tried to eat were still good to eat. I couldn't stomach it, and tossed them in for the gators.

I lived in Mississippi all my life. Water snakes and moccasins are like fire ants, always look before you walk and where.
Many confuse a typical water snake with moccasins. I myself have never seen a moccasin staying in water deeper than it's own girth.
But that's not the point. Yes getting an unpredictable child fully away from it with no heroics of killing it is the smarter move.

Was running a trot line in the Mississippi river with my grandfather and my Uncle Pat when I was about 6. They pulled the line, there was a moccasin on one hook; my grandfather beheaded it with the snapper hatchet, right through the bottom of the john boat.

Summertimes growing up, my mom would take my sister and I and head over to Lipan, Tx, little country suburb outside of Fort Worth to visit her sister and their family. I remember one July 4th we all went “into town” at Granbury for the show on the lake. The whole day we swam right by the shore. I was maybe eight years old, my sister about five. Everything was fine and fun until a chorus of screams started up. Must’ve been a hundred folks in a mass rush for the shore and we joined the dash rather than get run over. A water moccasin was working it’s way right into the thick of where everyone had just been. Several men with rakes and shovels went out to say hello. They came back with a head in a shovel and the rest of it dangling from the rake, and we all went back into the water. Those fathers and grandfathers weren’t playing around, lol.