Fly fishing and things that go "Whoosh" in the Night

Hopefully this will be one of a series of posts about nighttime interactions.

A couple of years ago, I was fishing off my brother in law's dock.

As I was doing fan casts around the dock this early September evening, trying to attract
anything to take, I literally almost was scared into the water as a 'whoosh' went by my
head and a dark figure dove past toward the water surface:

I really never knew these buggahs hunted at night...until then.

Cool birds.

However, last night, I was trying to entice a freshwater bass to hit my bass bug and came across an old friend:

I always encounter these rodents at night when fishing eastern waters. Especially flyfishing.

They love scaring the c**p out of you as they dive for your fly, and swoop by your hear chasing said fly before it hits the water.

I was surprised that there was not more info out on the net (when doing a quick search) but did find this from across the pond but here it is unfiltered....

Bats and fly fishing

• Ireland has nine species of bat, all species are protected.
• Bat favour rivers and streams.
• Despite recent advances people are frightened of bats, especially at night, in the dark on a river
• Of 100 fly fishers in Ireland interviewed 62 had hit or hooked bats
• With an estimated 73 K fly fishing in those years 48 K such accidents
• Ireland has roughly 500,000 bats (approximately) of which 400,000 are Pipistrelles

kind of interesting stats... I do know of anglers who had to unhook bats. I've had several "hits" from bats but no hookups (thankfully).