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I was fishing this weekend on ky lake it was a cloudy day looked like a storm was rolling in with some thunder ..had a couple rods in holders .when I grabbed one I received a static electric shock not just once but maybe 10 times in a row ..you could hear and see the spark ... Needless to say we got off the water in a hurry !!
Yep, seen that before. Graphite in the rods, and the static in thunderstorms do not make for good combos. I saw a rod a couple years ago that was pretty much frayed from the tip to about half way to the handle from being struck by lightning while it was standing in a rod holder on a boat.
There is a high power line that crosses the river here. And on cool damp mornings you will often feel the charge. I throw the pole down and move along a couple hundred yerds. But if it were thunderstorm as you were in the direction would be the ramp.
Yea pitch jig out ,slack line go up towards sky .hear rumble ,fishing partner says fort cambell ,look down at 8 year old daughter her hair is like really standing up.Take it to ramp quick get her in truck YOU got to respect the big pond ,It can humble you an ruin your day real quick .but no where else I rather be
Got a pretty good buzz idling across a lake one evening, heading in because I was hearing thunder in the distance and it was getting closer. Lightning crash/flash way down the lake and I got the buzz through the steering wheel ... figured the lightning had hit the lake and I had just got a wee bit of the voltage. :dono Nevertheless, I don't stay on the lake, if possible, when threatening clouds appear or distant thunder starts rumbling. Ma Nature don't like me all that much, anyway, so I try not to give her any reason to increase my chances of "damage" !!
I was trolling for sauger on KY lake several years ago with my brother-in-law. There was a bad thunderstorm well south of Paris Landing and we were just north of Blood River. I went to reposition one of my graphite spinning rods and raised it to about a 45 degree angle---it hummed!! I could lower it and it would stop/raise it and it would sound like Luke Skywalker's light sabre. I never did notice any hair standing up but figured I was pressing my luck. I never could get my b-i-l to hold that rod. Believe me I tried.
found this video on youtube this Is exactly what happened when I picked up the rod... And the sky looked like in the video to boot... scared the crap out of me !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPRUXALIcuQ
I was trolling for striper one summer using led core line and a storm came over the dam in a matter of minutes so I headed to the nearest island to beach by boat and get off the water. I did not worry about rolling my line in,just wanted to get to the island.I heard a big boom behind me before I made it to the island and looked back and that led core line was burned to the reel.
While backpacking with the Boy Scouts in the Porcupine Mountains on Lake Superior we heard a storm rolling in. We we sitting on a cliff eating dinner and looking down on the valley below us. We watched a several Bald Eagles soaring above the tree tops. One of the other adults made a comment that a female leaders hair was standing straight up. We all looked at her, laughed, then I said we need to get off this rocky cliff before were dinner for the Eagles below. We all uneasily laughed and hauled butt. Static electricity is the first sign of an impending lightening strike.
While we see the lightening come to the ground, it actually goes both ways, up and down. When you feel that static it's starting the trip up.
We had lightening hit the Cotton Wood tree across the street from my house one night about 5 years ago now. Lite the sky up like daylight, blew a 2' wide swath of bark off the tree from tip to root. Fortunately I have a smaller decorative tree in the front yard or we would have had bark flying through our 8' wide bay window. I pulled bark out of the lawn for years after that. It was shot with such force that the bark entered the ground like a missed arrow. Neighbors two blocks away reported bark in their yard. It tripped every GFI in my house and fried my garage door opener. Plus the water pipe under the street burst and we had a steady fountain until the city fixed it the next day.
I don't mess around with lightening. More people die from getting struck by lightening then win lotto.
I felt the a rod humming one time fishing a bass tournament. We were fishing a North facing bluff and the sky was clear. In just minutes it was dark, except when the lightning flashed. Since then I am pretty spooked by any kind of storm while fishing.
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.
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!
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 .....
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.
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.
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.
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.