A witness said the man's surfboard was on the ground and, when he went to pick it up, the snake emerged from beneath and bit him.

Ambulance officers applied a pressure bandage to his leg and took him to Wollongong Hospital where he was reported to be in a stable condition.

Earlier, a WIRES volunteer was called to a home at Jamberoo to collect a tiger snake that had been sunbaking on a verandah.

WIRES snake handler Cathy Joukador said that with summer approaching, WIRES Illawarra was receiving up to five calls a day for the removal of snakes.

"The hotter it is, the more active they are,'' she said.

Most snakes in the Illawarra are harmless, with the exception of the red-bellied black snake, eastern brown, tiger and death adder.

However, the National Parks and Wildlife Service urged residents to treat all snakes as deadly, as a precaution.

"They will usually only attack if they feel threatened - they just want to get away, so give them plenty of space to make their escape,'' a spokeswoman advised, while also urging residents to watch for funnel web spiders.

"The mature males spend summer out looking for females and can accidentally wander into houses and garages and under gaps in doors - that's when most of the unwanted encounters occur,'' she said.