LoL, I wouldn't have been able to stop myself from doing the same. Water snakes are neat. They seem be curious and friendly...but usually it's because they want you to share your fish with them (that's been my experience while fishing).
I am indeed a country girl. I spent a good amount of time out on the creek banks, out in the creek water, out in the woods, out in the wild.
When I was a child, I went fishing with my grandmother at a pond out in the Osage. Water snakes started to surround us. I looked at my grandmother and one was hovering over her on a limb. One was slithering between her legs. Others were just hanging around, waiting on a fish. There was a lot of them. She is just standing there with a cigarette hanging out her mouth, fishing and as calm as could be. I was 9 at the time and I asked her, aren't you bothered by these snakes all around you? She said, "Ohh, they ain't gonna hurt ya'." After that, we called it The Snake Pond. And that woman managed to get me to go there with her other times. When I finally told her that while I understand that they aren't gonna hurt me, it's just too much having a bunch of water snakes slithering around me all the time. It's hard to do any fishing. So she took me to another fishing area. The bank was overgrown with grass. I set down on the bank. I started hearing movement in the grass. I gave my grandmother the side eye. Snakes started appearing from the grass, from the other side of the bank, etc. "Ohh, they ain't gonna hurt ya'!"