2022 caught 20 , 2023 #22 caught, mom had kids

[addy1]

So happy for you !!!!

A two year battle, a lot of fish and frogs lost. Hope they stay away!

 

[cas]

Woohoo! So are you off to buy more fish?

 

[addy1]

Woohoo! So are you off to buy more fish?

lol we drove this am to get more fish, down to 5 in the 1000 gallon tank, but they were closed, family emergency. Only open thur, fri, sat so will need to try again some other day. Call first lol. I figure we loss about 1/2 of what we put in just in looking at the herd.

Only 15-20 minutes from us, so no issue to go back.

 

[GBBUDD]

Take @tulas 4 koi they are 20 year Olds , the blue heron should know they are to big to eat

 

[addy1]

Take @tulas 4 koi they are 20 year Olds , the blue heron should know they are to big to eat

No koi no thanks

 

[addy1]

Another 3 footer..............darn it! Got my traps out again.
We have been watching for snakes with no sightings for the last 3 weeks or more. It showed up 3 hours after we put the fish in the pond.
Watched it chasing the new fish with mouth open.

Just bought 100 more fish, the hatchery closes next weekend for the winter.

 

[j.w]

Another 3 footer..............darn it! Got my traps out again.
We have been watching for snakes with no sightings for the last 3 weeks or more. It showed up 3 hours after we put the fish in the pond.
Watched it chasing the new fish with mouth open.

Just bought 100 more fish, the hatchery closes next weekend for the winter.


View attachment 153501View attachment 153502

Oh crap, I thought you might be done w/these buggers! Hope you catch it before it gets any of your brand new fish!

 

[addy1]

Oh crap, I thought you might be done w/these buggers! Hope you catch it before it gets any of your brand new fish!

I thought so also, darn snakes. We loss probably close to 75 fish eyeball count, I know we loss all except 6 in the 1000 gallon stock tank.

 

[j.w]

I thought so also, darn snakes. We loss probably close to 75 fish eyeball count, I know we loss all except 6 in the 1000 gallon stock tank.

Catch that thing now! Don't want to see it get anymore fish!

 

[GBBUDD]

Another type of trap you could set is a compond bucket with a rod through it and cut the lid so it will fit tightly but not to tight inside the bucket so when the snake climbs aboard it rotates the lid and falls in the bucket where you have 87 gigawatts inside and you morph them back to 1898

 

[bagsmom]

Oh my gosh! At this point, you could just catch them and put little orange fin outfits on them. Pretend they are long, skinny, bad-tempered goldfish.
Sorry you keep having these visitors. Being accepting of nature is great but geez... these snakes need to find another place to eat.

 

[GBBUDD]

you could take a elastic band that we use on spear fishing guns and make a spear but one that has a blunt tip that's like 2 inches round that could never puncture a liner and shot the dang thing. obviously there's no shortage of snakes around there

 

[YShahar]

Oy, not another one!? Are they being born in your pond or coming in from somewhere else?

I hope you manage to trap this latest one before it eats any of your new fish.

 

[cas]

Oh crap. The thing actually was waiting for you to restock the pond. Fingers crossed you get it quickly.

 

[addy1]

I think we had one big fat female show up last year, it was our first snake , ie water snake , ever. I sort of watched it, was sort of fun, then started seeing more. I think she dropped babies and that is what we are fighting this year.

We had another big fat female, caught a picture of her mating, she was trapped a few days later, relocated along with her man. But since then we have one after another show up. Have trapped 3 at a time, same trap.

Mating female this year.

 

[addy1]

Oh crap. The thing actually was waiting for you to restock the pond. Fingers crossed you get it quickly.

Two traps out, waiting to see if it gets caught. One has a small goldfish that swam in. Right now a sacrifice, but rather lose one then the numbers I have been losing.

The hatchery is shut next weekend for the winter.

 

[addy1]

Oy, not another one!? Are they being born in your pond or coming in from somewhere else?

I hope you manage to trap this latest one before it eats any of your new fish.

I think they have been born here, in 11 years of ponding this is the first time ever we have had a water snake issue. There is a river near us, but quite a long snake wiggle away, like a few miles.
We must have had one wiggle here and it was the female which dropped the kids. They can lay up to 30 babies. Average 6-8.

 

[cas]

Doesn't it take a while for a snake to get that big?

 

[rubyduby]

I think they have been born here, in 11 years of ponding this is the first time ever we have had a water snake issue. There is a river near us, but quite a long snake wiggle away, like a few miles.
We must have had one wiggle here and it was the female which dropped the kids. They can lay up to 30 babies. Average 6-8.

Wow Addy1....Could it be due to the excessive heat this year? Maybe a lot of habitat has dried up forcing them to find other ponds? Glad I only have one...hope its a male

 

[addy1]

Doesn't it take a while for a snake to get that big?

According to what I have read, mature in 2 years. There is a chance we had some which I never saw, then ended up with so many saw them all of the time.

More than you ever wanted to know about water snakes:


Baby water snakes are born in June, July, or August. The mother gives birth to five to 60 young, sometimes over a period of several days. One female was observed to give birth to 99 babies. The young are 7 to 10 inches long.
They grow to be 24 to 42 inches. Females are generally bigger than males.

They give birth to live young (viviparous) after a 58-day gestation period. This snake is mature at 2 to 3 years of age.

These snakes eat frogs, turtles, fish, and other small animals found in their habitat. Sometimes they will round up fish or tadpoles with their long bodies and them eat them, or simply swim through a school of fish with their mouths open. Northern water snakes may also eat dead fish.

The young snakes will grow quite quickly for the first couple of years, doubling in size by the time they are two years old, when they become sexually mature. From the third year onwards the Northern Water Snake will continue to grow, but at a much slower pace. As they get older, they will also become darker in color. Snakes that have been kept in captivity have been known to live up to ten years, but there is very little evidence about the life span of the Northern Water Snake in the wild.

Northern Water Snake is one of the larger species of snakes in the United States

A sedentary species, the watersnake’s home range is the size of the wetland it inhabits, or less than a 400-foot stretch of a river or stream.