The other day I was feeding some salmon to some of my guests. I had been using a pair of hemostats to give out some small pieces to babies.
I then switched gears to feeding some larger pieces to adults. When I opened the enclosure and went to pick up a piece of fish I noticed a small piece of substrate stuck to the end of the hemostats. That's all that was on the end. No fish just substrate. With this groups water dish right in front of me I swished the hemostats in the water, effectively cleaning the substrate off.
I proceeded with the feeding of these monsters. Within moments I had a nice gang of female radixes in front of me but I also noticed a couple up in the water dish fishing.
This was unusual as they have never reacted that way before when I have fed fish. The only difference was the "swish" of the hemostats.
What a great ability to have to ad in survival. Picking up the minute(to us) scent particle of the fish in the water.
I think the next time I will just swish the hemostats and not offer any food to see if I get the same reaction.
The more I work with these wonderful snakes more more I appreciate them.

P.S My neighbor installed a small pond in his back yard. One day I asked him how it was working out.
He said everything was fine and that he noticed a few garter snakes around the pond from time to time.
The pond is stocked with some small koi.
I'm not sure how long it will be stocked with Koi.