I'm in the middle of totality tomorrow. my brother and I plan on fishing our small mouth stream while the lights go out. Will be kinda cool to fish in the daytime one minute and nighttime a few minutes later. I'll report back.

My wife manages an optometrist practice of 5 doctors, all I can tell you is DO NOT look directly at this event, even if you believe to have eye protection on.
Lots of fake knock-off glass out there!
Even the real glass can still cause damage to the eye.

I am not going to even glance upward, not worth the risk of permanent eye damage.
We are just outside the total eclipse swath by a few miles, but I will look at the ambient lighting effect around me.

BE CAREFUL.......THINK!

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 08/20/17 at 19:25:04:


Wrong.....

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/08/17/eclipse-glasses-alt...

I would sure hate to buy a cheap yard sale glass only to cause permanent damage to my eyes so I can say I saw it......
Might be the last thing I ever saw, clearly.

Be careful and smart, I am watching the effects of it around me, I won't look at the sun at all.  

edit: you would even think about hurting a child to prove a point, dammn Jog, you need a break.

I used that glass over thirty years ago.
Idiot, think I need to prove nuts to you?
That I might risk anything to do it?

Follow up now that I'm at a keyboard. The fishing was great beforehand. Caught dozens of smallies. No giant pigs like we sometimes catch in this stream however, but fishing was good. Once the time got closer, we found a gravel bar to stay at during the whole event. There were some clouds around but nothing to block our view.

I would say at 50-75% coverage we noticed all the minnows that normally stay close to the bank began moving slowly in mass out towards deeper water. Also noticed a few small to medium small mouth coming out of hiding and slowing inching their way towards to minnows. As it got darker, saw one smallmouth chase a minnow with incredibly quick turns until he caught him. Which is why when you're fishing smallies, if you spot a fish moving towards your lure, it's not a bad idea to pull fast and mimic and escape.

At near totality but just a sliver of the sun showing through the glasses, you can't look at the sun with your bare eyes. It's still too bright. All this noise about you're go blind if you look at it is nonsense. It's no different than driving or riding. Sometimes the sun is low in the sky as you're heading west and you just don't stare at it. Pretty simply. You look up, it's to bright, you look away.  It's like putting your hand in hot water. You pull it out.  People who damage their eyes must be looking through binoculars or a telescope. In that case, I can easily imagine a fraction of a second could damage you.

But at totality, the corona is an amazing sight to see in person. I wish I'd had binoculars then. That would have been cool to see.

Next full eclipse in the US is April 8, 2024. Austin & Dallas TX are in full totality zone as is Little Rock, AR I think. Southern Missouri is, maybe 90-120 miles south of me. I'll definitely go see this again.

It's in my back yard next time.
If I'm not in the back yard before that, it'll be my first total eclipse.