Extremely heavy rains seem to drive water snakes (Yellow bellied & Moccasins)up from the lake and into our pond. And, once there, they find the living pretty good. I saw one grab a palm sized goldfish and take it out of the pond. I startled the snake and the fish was dropped and I returned it to the pond.

They are really hard to trap. I have a small gauge shotgun (.410) that I use to kill them. I have to stalk them for days to get a shot.

I do have some King snakes that hang around the pond and yard but I leave them alone.

Well, that's worst possible news. I have heard you can bait a minnow trap with a sacrificial goldie but I don't think this guy would fit in a minnow trap.

I'm afraid I've just lost my pond. DH is going to have a fit, and the worst part is, I'm not sure he's wrong. I hate thinking this way. I don't let most snakes worry me but this is different.

If you have a healthy population of fish then the snake would have no reason to move. I would catch ours out of the pond and in the flower beds and they'd high tail it back to the pond until the day they didn't. I bought a "snake trap" on-line. It was a yellow rectangular box with open ends, a glue strip inside and some snake "attractant". It didn't work.

I really want to move the fish out of that pond, into a vessel I can cover, until Mr. Snake is starved into moving, if he is in there. DH pointed out that he has to come up sometime, but that is no help in my view. I don't know that he moved in, but I think it's a reasonable possibility. If he comes back to an empty larder, I think he'll move on.