Water Spout!

[Bobby Bass]

In all my thousands of hours on the water I have never seen a waterspout while I have been out fishing. I had just thrown a few casts into a small little cove and was moving down the shoreline when I saw a big swirl in the water just a few feet from shore. I was thinking a big fish but the swirl kept going around and in a second it was whipping water around and wandering in my direction. I could feel the sudden breeze in my face and water droplets were hitting my glasses. I was thinking to myself this is kind of cool as the little water spout increased in size and the wind grew even stronger. It was about thirty feet away from the rear of my boat and I was thinking of reaching for my video camera and trying to capture it but I kept watching.

I didn't go for the camera as I was having a hard time seeing it myself so I just watched as it came closer to the boat. When it went over the motor and rocked the boat I was having some second thoughts about how cool this was. But before I could do anything it had gone by and was heading out away from the boat and into the lake. It went maybe another thirty feet before just disappearing into a ring of water and the wind that was with it was gone. I wiped water from my glasses and looked to see if anything had been sucked out of the boat. The spout was maybe ten feet across but real intense in the center that was three or four feet wide. It was on the water for maybe fifteen seconds but hard to say when you are not really timing it. Anyone else ever had this expence?

[EBass]

Just on seen them on TV - amazing what nature can do.

[BartmanMN]

Sounds cool. You better stop and buy a lottery ticket on the way home. It's your lucky day.

[TruthWalleyes]

I was on the farm a dozen or so years ago. My older sister was outside sunbathing and looking over tons of college letters. I think i was washing a car or some other outdoor activity. I hear my sister shouting and i look over and there is a string of papers headed up into the sky. Little swirl or miniture tornado, not sure of the term, but it picked up all her papers and sent them hundreds of yards into the air. Hilarious to watch, since i was her little brother. I've only seen this a few other times, but never enough debris for the winds to pick up to be as neat as that day.

[reinhard1]

i have seen this once in Canada while fishing White Otter Lake. we were heading from our campsite on a peninsula through a narrows and as we were entering the larger part of the lake we seen 3 of these large water spouts heading in the direction of the opposite shore. we stopped our boats and watched as these spouts hit the shore and bent the trees good as it headed into the woods and dissapeared. the skies were blue with just a few small clouds and realy not that windy.

i also have been involved with a snow spout i guess you could call it on the Gunflint trail. while the rest of the guy's were in this small bay fishing for rainbows i was just outside of the bay going for lakers. my brother and the others seen the snow spouts comming down this narrow lake and one hit my small portable and carried me about 50 yards before i stopped sliding. all i had was my heater, a chair, depth finder, and my pole in there. it was a mirracle that the heater didn't fall on me. good luck.

[Ballyhoo]

I have seen several of them on LOW. Never gotten close enough to feel them but close enough to be nervous.

[art321]

fly fishing off a dock up by McGregor and I hear a rustling in the reeds and see movement. I was thinking it might be a beaver. Then it hits the water and comes right at me. Nothing in the air, just swirling water about 3ft across. Then it came across where I was standing. PRetty coo but then my fline line lifts off the water and is going straight up in the air to about 20ft high. Pretty cool. Then it moved off into the lake and was gone.

[B@ssmaster]

Last summer my uncle watched as a waterspout formed about 50 feet offshore and headed right for his 14' rowboat. It picked up his rowboat from the shore and flipped it over onto the beach. There was another boat beached about 20' away, it sat untouched. I was in the driveway at the time about 100 yards away, and the weather was clear with only a very slight breeze. Had I not been there I wouldn't have believed it. Turns out that the impact cracked the motor mount of his 2 year old 10hp near the pivot point. He figured the insurance company would never believe him, given the weather was calm, but the person who handled the claim said that it happens way more often than most people realize, apparently waterspouts are fairly common.

[ted4887]

I saw a water spout about 3 years ago while on a snorkeling trip at the Dry Tortugas in the Florida Keys. It was a safe distance away, but very intense. Had many people in the boat really worried that it would do some serious damage. I'll look to see if I can find the old pictures from that trip.

[SpecialK]

I saw a couple when I lived in FL. They were off the coast out in the ocean. Very cool but I don't know that I would have wanted to have it go over the top of me.