What is this fella?

coloring, pattern, and size look like a cotton mouth. But the head doesn't look like one from that angle to me.

Eye was black ball. Made me “think” non venomous. About 3’ long and yellow belly

maybe a plain-bellied water snake

Yellow-bellied water snake

This^^^^^

looks like water snake

Yes, yellow bellied water snake. They get pretty large and thick. Very musky too!

yall nailed it. thanks for all the replys. 5:30am on the backporch...he was unwelcomed.

Yup...As soon as you see those bars on their jaws you can take cotton mouth off the list and it’s almost always gonna be a water snake of some sort.

Wow

round pupils & bars on the mouth = water snake

Certainly a water snake which consistently gets misidentified as a cottonmouth. Most people I know make assumptions that any dark colored snake in water is a water moccasin/cottonmouth, when in reality the vast majority of times it's a water snake. Not saying don't be careful but I bet at least 9 to 1 I see water snakes vs true moccasins. Actually, I can't count the numbers of times I've come across 100's of water snakes but could come close to counting all the incidents in which I've ran across a moccasin.

Watersnake judging by the yellow belly