What species is this specimen? My ability to ID water snakes is poor at best. Leaning towards it being a northern water snake.

Yes and can be aggressive.

This guy was pretty chill, let me take quite a few pictures from each side. Then after I walked down the spillway about 10 feet away to watch another snake he sat for about 10 more minutes and then slowly moved to the brush.he was a big boy too probably around 3 feet long.

Has a red belly if I remember right... cranky buggers, lol

Yup, northern. Nerodia sipedon.

Generally runners if approached. Will react badly if cornered or laid a hand on.

I only know of one kind of snake and it looks just like that one

Their bad attitude is why I dont handle water snakes at all. If a rat snake or a corn snake bites me its probably because of a mistake made, a water snake bites just because you look at them cross eyed.

My son has a chocolate lab that hunts those snakes. We'll go down to the pond and Gumbo gets in the edge in the water plants and weeds and hunts them. You can tell when he smells one and then he will grab it and shake it until snake parts are flying everywhere. I've seen him kill some bigger than that in the picture. He hates those things, I don't have any use for them either, nasty tempered things.

That dog is worth a million bucks. Buddy's lab would shake and bay when he would find a copper head. He hatted them things and would take a hour to settle down. figured he was bit as puppy. If you see him baying you grab the hoe and go kill snake.

Southern Illinois snake lol