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Last summer I posted about a northern water snake that had taken up residence in my, at that time brand new, pond. I was reassured that they would mosty eat frogs, etc. I had come to equilibrium with the snake who is really quite beautiful in the water, when you can see its markings much better than when it is on a dry stone. I even started calling it Pythias.

But today, while I was feeding the fish, the snake started chasing them with its mouth opea. It was clearly trying to catch the medium-sized 3 to 4 inch comets all of whom eluded it. I smacked the water and chased it back to wherever it is when I can't see it. I wonder if this is what happened to the fantails I had in there last year, they swim so much slower than the comets and shubunkins. I suppose, since there are more fish in the pond than last year that I should just accept this is part of nature, but I am fond of my goldfish. I'll try to get a picture.

When I was a kid, my friend and I were avid fisherman. There was a pond nearby that was really good for Bass fishing, but it also was home for a lot of water snakes. It wouldn't be unusual to see 3 or 4 different water snakes swim across the pond while we were fishing.

One day we planned on eating some of our catch, so we kept a couple decent size bass to take home with us. We decided to keep 2 that were approx. 14 inches long. We put them on a stringer and staked them to the bank while we continued to fish. When we finally had enough fishing for the day we went to retrieve our stringer and to our surprise there was one fish, and one very large water snake now attached to the stringer. We didn't know what to do....the snake was attached to the stringer because the fish was.

Long story short, snakes do and will eat fish, even large ones, if the opportunity presents itself.