Canal Rats are REAL?!?!
 

I honestly thought it was a joke until I saw my first one last nite. Am now paranoid that I will fall, hit my head, and wake up to my eyeballs being gnawed on by a pack of giant, amphibious, nasty canal rats. Shudder, shudder.

Fell asleep on the rocks one night covering at rats nest, awoke to the screaming of rats beneath me .. ...the horror !!!!!!!

How about when you drop something in the rocks? How quick do you reach down in there?http://imagehost.biz/ims/pictes/209148.gif

Between them and the seagulls, I can't keep my bait uncovered

WTF is that thing????

Every time you've posted in a thread with the new sig someone always asks 'wtf is that thing!?!' lol. It's a stargazer.

Rats NUTHIN' How about the darn SKUNKS! Had one walking down by the rocks just above me....talk about standing still! I lost a jig I was so still!!

How about when they go after your eels, or they start fighting over something.

I always wondered how the rats survive after a extreme high tide. Such as the one last winter when the ditch was full and overflowing. You would think they would get drowned.

Anyone who has seen the rats have also seen the humongus black snakes that hang in the rocks, trying to ambush a rat or mouse. I was fishing near highbanks one morning and saw the biggest snake ever. He was near the edge of the road and I was coming up from the edge of the ditch. Without exagerating, it was damn near 5 feet long - black and fat. That snake sent chills up my spine! :as:

not just the ditch .. I've seen huge rats in other rocky areas .. One place has a rat crossing . If you pay attention you'll see one run by every half hour on the same path. Multi million dollar homes there . If they only knew..

ive been fishing the canal my entire life and ive never seen a snake. plenty of rats, but never a snake. that is scary!

yucky doody

black racers for the win!

snakes are so cute.

Imagine how many rats there would be if not for the snakes :eek:

Problem is that a 5' snake will eat one Canal-sized rat, and take two weeks to digest it. Won't eat another one. And there are thousands of rats and only a handful of snakes.

Same situation with seals and great whites. One or two sharks won't make a dent in the seal numbers :( And seals breed faster than whites.

10-12 years ago, camping at
scussett.. ran into one of the biggest rats I've ever seen on the rocks there... looked as large as a small raccoon, thought it might be a possum at first, but as I got closer.. nope.. Rat...
same trip, couple days later, mid day sitting on the rocks with my kids, my son dropped his soda can and it fell into the rocks... he started to stick his arm down to get it and yelped, and jumped... I looked in the crevice... I have no idea how long, but there was a black snake in there, that was huge! Diameter was amazing.. we, made real good time back to the camper....

Maybe we can train the seals to eat rats ;)

Or the rats to eat the seals. Or even better yet for them to eat each other.

I bet these rats would make good shark bait floating in a slick offshore.

the rats help keep it clean from all the slobs . I have learned to never place my bait on the rocks . the snakes eat the rats , the homeless eat the rats hi ho the deery o the rats eat the bait

rats are good seals are bad !

What will eat the snakes??? haha
I had a racoon follow me down a jetti one night last year. I didnt know he was there until I got to the end. I was scratching my head, wondering how I had gone through so much mackeral, when I noticed the 2 eyes eerily reflecting in the moonlight a couple feet away from me...

i'm never fishing on rocks again...the fish can wait..:hidin:

but 1 - 5' snake will EASILY take down a whole nest of rat babies as well, and snakes being opportunists, will choose that over mommy rat every time

however, still more rats, and rats still win...

too bad that it gets cold here, letting a few water monitors and burmese pythons go along the canal would solve that problem, quickly...

I hear rats are pretty tasty .. haven't got that desperate after a good skunking .. not yet ..:soon:

If I was one of those snakes without venom I would worry about getting eaten by the rats... When I was kid I saw a BIG RAT kill a small tough dog when surrounded by a pack of dogs.... then the bigger dogs shredded Mr. Rat.

Whadda talking about?

Sorry Man :usd: