Have any of you ever had this happen before

[glasseyes]

I let a friend talk me into fishing a tournament on a Sunday morning and me skip church. We were fishing a cove, sunshine and calm but there was a storm far off in distance. All of a sudden a bob exploded in a tree thirty yards from our boat and blew the top out of it all over water . we both hit the bottom of the boat and could feel the electric charge from it. I looked at him when we had calmed down and told him I would never skip church to fish with him on a Sunday again, he laughed but I was serious., it was a lightning strike that hit the tree and also a huge school of shad nearby all flew up out of the water at the same time when it hit.

[livemusic]

This is a really good thread with kind of a public service announcement flair to it. It would do people on this site a favor if the original title were edited to not be so vague (sorry... a pet peeve!) and included something like 'the dangers of lightning strikes.' Some really good stories!

[Ketchn]

we used to do the striped fish many moons ago and YES right before an approaching storm they lose it ....the bite is ridiculous good and we used to push it a bit . so here comes the storm across the lake off in the distance and the rods are all down in spider rig fashion (gettin bit) ....all the sudden the front 2 rods start to have little visible electricity running up and down them ....they were fiberglass though and it really didnt make any difference to me what they were made of at that point ...we looked at each other and said ...
that is about enough of this for sure .....

[ChrisS]

I was on the Lake Friday afternoon when those storms rolled in, at first they looked WAY south of Jonathan Crk. so I thought my FIL and I would be able to stay out fishing. After about 30-45min of watching the sky more than I was watching my rod tips I fnally counted the time between the flash and the bang. at 7.5 seconds and I told him we better head in, sure enough bout the time we got to Sportsman's she opened up.

[glasseyes]

I also have an old preacher friend with a partial artificial leg he lost in Korean war and we always wade the creek for white bass when they spawn. Well one of those days a storm was brewing and fish were on fire, we were half mile up a lake bed out in open and kept telling him it was time to go, he said it will blow over, no, its time to go, na it will blow over and be ok the fish are bitin no time to go ! . This went on for 15-20 minutes the storm moved in with high winds, so then he decides its time to go, we make it about 100 yrds in the pouring rain and of course neither of us had on rain gear. BOOM lightning hit a dead tree couple hundred yrds in front of us in a big ball of fire. I stopped and just laughed and told him they would put this in our obituary , "just had to stay a few more minutes, the fish were biting". He's 81 now and we don't get to wade any more but still laugh about that one.

[skeetbum]

What Hanr said about the air gathering energy before a strike is what I've heard before. Any of the described things happening would put me in high gear to someplace else, in the opposite direction of any cloud system.

[Hanr3]

More than just fiction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MUYsIjTKvk

The positive charges gather on the ground and create streamers that reach up to the lightening bolt. The streamers are anywhere from three to a few hundred feet long. That static charge you see and feel are the formation of streamers. Imagine a streamer making the final connection for a lightening bolt 5 miles in the sky. The force and power, 2000 amps is more than enough to kill you.

Here is one story of a lucky fisherman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10PZ_0GK_bU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gkkKRfXzZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEHNeoYo9wY

This the season for lightening. Be careful out there.