A day spent up in the valley today was briefly interrupted by a quick moving and not so calm thunderstom.

After hearing a loud thunder clap not too far away, I began to get a bit nervous but my car was a good distance away and it looked as though the clouds had past.

A freind of mine and I, continued our way up river to hit some promising looking holes but the thunder (and occasional lightning strike) did not pass.

Kevin was fishing a piece of water about 50 yards or so above me as I was dredging the heavy broken water of a very good looking hole.

Occasionaly, the A6 jets from Whidbey will fly up the valley so as I stood pounding away at the water, I could not tell if I was hearing thunder above or the A6's as the heavy water was creating just a little too much noise.

Then suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a monsterous bright flash come up the river and before I could think, I jumped, threw my hands and arms in the air and watched my Sage & Galvan go flying out of my left hand and my Action Optics sunglasses jump into the river from their perch on my shirt.

I tried to reach for the rod and reel and glasses with each arm but was so shocked I could not move. Finally, as the realization setting in that over a thousand dollars worth of gear was floating downstream, I made two attempts at my rod and managed to snag it (Thank God!) but could not reach my glasses before they were carried off and sunk to the depths of the river.

I turned around and saw Kevin hunkered down in some streamside brush and when I regained my compusre, I very quickly and all hunched down made my way over as well.

When I finally sat down, he said that second he saw the flash, he turned his heads towards me and saw me jump with arm and hands in the air and for just a moment, thought maybe I had been hit.

I am alive, as you can see, most of you are thankful, I am sure there are a couple of you that are not!

Lately, I have thought how lucky I have been as my sunglasses have lasted me around 3 yaers or so...that was definately a new record for me. I will miss 'em!

I heard on the news around 5:00 that they already had some 40-50 strikes in the N. Cascades today and a bunch of fires started in other parts of the state.

Glad you are O.K... sounds a little hair raising!


So did you catch a fish?

There was lots of thubder around Puyallup today and thankfully quite a bit of rain. Perhaps the fishing will get better now....

Consider it a lesson learned at a discount price. It's good to keep in mind that fishing rods (graphite ones in particular) are an *extremely* good conductor of electricity. You stood a decent chance of living up to your alias. Lightning seeks the path of least resistance, which is not always the highest point. What we see as lightning is actually the return stroke. In simplified terms, at the beginning of a strike, the cloud becomes charged over where it will emerge, and objects on the ground with throw off invisible streams into the air. When the stream makes contact with the charged air particles, watch out! The stream from a graphite rod could be taller than one from a much larger tree. So if there's a thunderstorm going off, don't feel protected by trees, because it may strike a graphite rod first.

When the thunder starts rolling, so do I.

You can find more info here:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/lightning.htm

Parker's Golden Rule:

"You're not allowed to say Dork, Dork, Dork, until *after* you're taken to the hospital!"

That's why we call you Special......

Spark,

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't your sunglasses go for a swim that day a couple years ago when you first laid eyes on "you know who"? What was your excuse that day???

I think I better get you a set of Chums for Christmas.

sinktip

Kevin???? I bet you were really fishing with Plunker.

Fishing in a lightin storm will re-spike your hair and give it a color not even you have come up with in the past.

Fish on, be careful.

Nice story. Sounds like your luck is still holding....sunglasses or not.

Did ya catch any fish?

We almost can call you truly "Sparkey" now.

I did not catch any of the targeted species yesterday but I did manage to tie into one of the most beautiful wild rainbows I have ever ran into...she had no problem corking my 5 weight and ending a nice run with a big twisting leap! I should of snapped a quick photo, but I was too concerned about getting her back into the water.

I also stumbled across a beautiful waterfall...we were trying to walk a creek back hoping that it took us up to the logging road and inturn back to my car but alas we were deadended at this (sorry about the photo quality...I had to manually brighten it was taken under very low light conditions)...



btw-Picked up a new pair of glasses today...it was a great excuse as I have wanted to switch over to a Photocramtic Copper lense from my standard brown for a while now. And sinktip, you will be happy to hear I threw in a pair of chums for myself!