Lightning strike narrowly misses fishing boat

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Lightning strike narrowly misses Texas teen in fishing boat

Tucker Owings, a professional angler, accidentally caught the crazy scene on video when he left his GoPro camera running. The electric bolt cracked like gunfire as the teen headed for the shore of Lake Athens.

BY DOYLE MURPHY / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2013, 2:06 PM

A bolt of lightning crashes directly in front of professional angler Tucker Owings as he films with a GoPro camera.

A lightning strike nearly lit up a fishing star caught on his boat in the midst of a Texas storm.

Tucker Owings, 16, captured the shocking scene in video that went viral in a flash.

“Close call while fishing yesterday on lake Athens,” Owings wrote on Facebook.

The 5-second clip shows the teen angler’s boat cruising across calm waters when a vertical bolt of lighting splits the panorama.

Thunder cracks like machine gun fire.

Ownings later told KLTV he accidentally left his GoPro camera running as he and a friend headed in.

Tucker K. Owings, a 16-year-old professional angler, captured a frightening lightning strike on camera. FACEBOOK

“Out of nowhere that flash just popped right in front of the boat,” Ownings said.

The teen, who became a professional rodman at age 14, said the close-range blast left him with a headache the rest of the day.

“I couldn’t tell you if it was the sound barrier hitting me or if it was actually charge or the heat of it,” Owings said. “But you could definitely feel it. My hair was standing on end.”

He and the friend hurried to the shore and jumped onto land.

“We didn’t even bother trailing the boat,” Owings said. “We just beached it, ran to the shelter, the fishing shack. We stood there and let it pass.”

The hiatus didn’t last long. Ownings said he headed back to the water soon after the clouds broke.