Never wake a Sleeping Snake

Thought I would share a childhood story. Actually I was 21 but who is counting. One day my dad and I were getting ready to do fishing and my mother decided that she wanted to go out with the boys, and we looked at each other and said, "Really?"
So we were going up to the other end of the lake to do some premier bass fishing. We were doing pretty well and fishing in some of our favorite spots. Now let me just say this is not the biggest boat in the word and gets a little crowded with 3 people, especially casting.
We came to this area that we liked and I noticed this 4 ft long water snake sunning on a tree that had fallen in the water. Wanting to show my casting accuracy, I said to my mom, "Watch this!!!"
Never a good sign when said in the south. So I cast about 20 yards to where this snake was and hit him right in the head. Now, I guess he must have been having a really bad day and he wanted us to share in the misery so he started swimming towards the boat.
Let me just say that my mother doesn't like snakes and she doesn't know how to swim so she became instantly nervous. Now my dad was at the front of the boat next to the trolling motor and could easily have cranked it up and moved away, but nooooooooo, he wanted to see how this situation was going to unfold.
So as the snake is swimming a straight line for the boat, in a side winding sort of way, my mother stands up and starts to move behind me and starts getting quite nervous. I was standing in the middle and was wondering what this guy was planning on doing when he got to the boat.
About the time that he reaches the boat my mother is screaming in my ear "Get him away now" and starts pounding on my arm with her fist. My dad is in the front of the boat saying "Honey, it's just a water snake" when the guy starts to try and climb up the side of the boat.
Well at this point I'm starting to get a little concerned so I take my rod, with the same lure that I hit him with the first time and start beating him off the side of the boat. He decides to try and sneak up from behind and goes to the back of the boat and tries to come over next to the motor.
I'm laughing so hard that my eyes start to water so I can't see the snake very well, so I pick up the paddle cuz it was a much wider item than my rod and wack him right in the back as he is climbing over into the boat.
My mother continues to pound on me and at the same time is pushing me towards the snake and the snake didn't like the wack in the back at all and sort of leaped back into the water and starts to swim away. My mother starts to settle down as I start to realize the numbness in my arm and will be black and blue. After this and she decides that we need to take her back to the car.
As we headed back I would be sitting there and just burst out laughing and she just gave me that look that didn't work on me anymore. Needless to say, she never went fishing with us again.