About 4-5 friends and I were smallmouth fishing on a small river in WV. Some of us were turning over rocks looking for helgramites and i happened to uncover a small (8-10'') garter snake.

After some consideration and consultation from one of my friends, Ikilled the snake and put it on my hook. We then waded out upstream of the rest of the guys and I casted out across the river and fed out line while the snake drifted down to our nearest buddy. It drifted down a little behind him and I set the bail and began to slowly reel it in, closing in on him.

Meanwhile upstream we were playing it totally cool like we were just fishing. As I was reeling it in, the current of course would cause the snake to ride right at the surface of the water (we were all in shorts and t-shirts(hot day)). The victim saw the snake and started yelling to the next guy "Bud!! Bud!!!! Snake!!!!! Snake, Bud!!!!!" and started moving away from it in a hurry. Before the other guy could see the snake, I'd open the bail and let out more line causing the snake to disappear. We did this about half a dozen times. The victim was the only one who saw it.

Finally it was getting too easy to mess with the victim (we chased him all around with that snake)and we just yelled and started laughing, walked down and explained. GOTCHA!!! We all laughed so hard we weredoubled over and still talk about it on occasion.