So, this is a little behind; but Friday Cody (the nephew) and I went out to work on a few bass and then shoot for some stripers. It was amazingly hot, so we figured the fishing would be interesting at best, and certainly were not expecting too much until after dark.
We headed to Claytor after I got home from work and were on the water fishing by 7. We were fishing the main body working some deeper structure where we hoped the bass to be holding out and where I found them last weekend. We were struggling so we opted to get the skunks off the boat with a couple of gills pretty quick. Then went back to work.
Cody ended up working a 6" motor oil colored worm, while I was working the same black and chartreuse jig and a small swim bait. I did miss a couple bits and a very aggressive bass who came off the shoreline and attacked the swimbait three times, and I just COULD NOT get a hook in that fishes mouth... Shortly later Cody missed on a good deep hit off his worm. It was starting to cool down and darken up when things got... Interesting...
So I knew there were a couple of storms heading our way and expected to ride out one storm around midnight, if accuweathers forcast held true, then fish after that until the next set came in then head out. Well, I got a couple texts ... "Bad storm coming this way" from Cody's mom, and "Apparently there are some very severe storms coming through, please be careful". Well these warnings and handy to have, and having a smart phone I popped up a weather map and saw ALL of WV covered with storms; but I couldn't get the maps to animate...
A couple mins later, Cody's getting more texts and my wife CALLS. She seldom calls when I'm fishing unless somethings up... so I answer and she says "You might wanna get off the water now...the trees are blowing sideways." At about the same time I got another text from Cody's mom saying that it just hit there, "OMG".
Needless to say, we strapped things down and headed to the dock. WIDE OPEN. A few mins later Cody's girlfriend who lives about 1/3 of the way between the lake and our homes said they just got hammered. We get close to the docks (heading from uplake to the public ramp, we were at the last turn where all the cliffs are.) and we can see some clouds rolling in...they look unhappy...
We make it to the cove and start quickly towards the docs, probably exceeding the no wake speed but I wanted to get up and out of the water before this storm hit and judging by the clouds moving over head its getting close. We get to the doc, Cody holds the boat over and I hop up and start up towards the truck and I hear it coming. I look back and there's a wall of debris, dust, leaves, water, I don't know what all coming our way and BOOM it hits. Trees are cracking, limbs falling and I'm in the middle of the woods heading to the truck! I am about to hop in, and suddenly its dark. Powers out. I had just installed some LED lights on the trailer so I turn them on and head back to the water to get the boat.
Tree limbs are everywhere! Dust and gravel is flying all over the place, twigs and leaves are flying by and stuff is falling all around. I get back to the road to go down to the water and there two trees down. On partially blocking the road the other had fully blocked it, but someone already moved it. So I go past and try to back down to the water. Mind you all this happened in literally a matter of minutes... MAYBE THREE from the time it started... I started to back in the trailer and was too far to the right and got my tires in some dirt. Fearing rain to start, I pulled back up and kept having to work up and back to finally get the trailer lined up and not hit the doc. The problem was I'm used to backing up using my mirrors; but with everything going on, I couldn't hardly see the doc - so I had to look over my shoulder to back up. Thank goodness I installed the LED lights or I wouldn't have been able to see anything...
So finally I get the boat down and loaded, were probably looking at about 7 or 8 mins now. We take the truck up to the top and lock down the boat and get pelted again by dust and rocks. We got things locked down and took off only to find the road looking like a tornado came through. Cody got nailed in the head by a flying limb (which came from across the cove... which is a long trip) He was no worse for the wear, but then ended up getting dirt and gunk in his eye. Lucky for him, his time spent working with metal lathes etc taught him how to get stuff out of your eye and he was able to get cleaned out quick and easy. So were off... and apparently so was the storm...
We had light winds and few sprinkles afterwards, but the worst of the storm was gone... we had been out in the whole dang thing! And I can tell you... I have NEVER seen anything come up on you so fast and so powerfully. It was kind of scary to be honest...you couldn't see much of anything so we didn't know if there was a tornado or just wind or how bad it was going to get etc. Apparently 80+ MPH winds and a number of small spin up tornadoes will do that. Did we get hit by one? I don't know. I can say I personally did not see any funnels, but I did see a bunch of dust devils in the parking lot so there was rotational winds of some sort. But I cannot begin to say we were in a tornado. I can say that a few miles away a classmate of mine was on the river fishing and personally saw a funnel cross the river below them... so, I know there were some around!
This is one of those times where if we had waited even a couple minutes longer we could have been in dire trouble... luckily I had told my wife my plans and she knew I was planning on waiting out the first storm of the night... and she as well as Cody's mom were both quick to let us know that more than just a normal storm was on the way and we were smart enough to listen and quickly get off the water. The water is dangerous enough, add a storm and it can get very dangerous...add a storm like that and it can become fatal. As an example, WDBJ 7 was reporting 5 missing boats on Lake Moomaw, and they weren't even sure how many people were in them... This is a great example of why it is so important to let people know what your doing, where your doing it at and what your plans are. And even moreso to respect mother nature. We got lucky. Things could have been much much worse, we came out unscathed... not everyone did...
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