Are Northern Water Snakes populations back to normal?
Posted By RichC on August 18, 2013
A friend shared a video a YouTuber, Amy Siewe, collecting Northern Water Snakes a couple years ago and he asked me if we were concerned about snakes crawling aboard when we sailed on Lake Erie … my answer was “no, we never even though about it.” It is interesting to see the perception people have of Ohio after reading a sensational article or video on the Internet.
The video below did reminded me of growing up on the lake and of our early sailing around the Western Basin of Lake Erie and the islands and I remember seeing the snakes regularly, but not in larger numbers or large piles! There were always a few water snakes particularly the rocky shorelines of the islands … but probably wasn’t hanging around or paying attention the mating (gathering) time of year either (see video below). I wonder if the snake population is now significantly higher that it once was … probably is?
Of course I go far enough bad to remember the headline that “Lake Erie is dead” and did my childhood chores of burying pile of smelly dead fish covered with algae on our beach. I also remember watching my dad, grandfather and uncle Bob catch wheelbarrows full of perch and even a few now extinct “blue pike” (blue walleye); this was before the now very popular yellow walleye made their rebounded … and also well before the Zebra Mussel problem of the mid-1980s. Snakes? Well … they are for someone else … watch and you’ll know what I mean. 
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