I was trying to pre-fish for a CAST for kids event and I was wondering if the lightening helps or hurts the bite?

Stay safe out there.

Don't know how it affects the fish, but I get my azz off the water. Had an uncle struck by lightening, not something I play with.

Lightning is no bueno for me. I don't care about the fish.

Severe weather means "No Fishing" for me.

+1 for me too...

Any lightning within about 8 miles is a hard abort.

In my experience, lightning will turn off the fishing, but 5 min before it starts can be lights out

Well. It’s incredibly dangerous to be out in it, but before and during a lightning storm the fishing can be lights out. It must might make your lights go out. Afterwards - not so much.

The cork on your reel won’t serve as much of an insulator when your rod takes a strike…

It’s not good when you can hear your rod humming…

This ^^^
I've stayed a few minutes too long because of how awesome the bite was.
We fished the 3rd McDonald's on Rayburn and a tornado came over the lake. This was before cell phones so we thought it was just another thunderstorm. Fishing was incredible for about 15 minutes, then my line started floating. By the time we got to a marina the sky was green and it was hailing. When it was over the air temp had dropped so much, fog was coming off the water.
We never got another bite that day.

Wow that sounds epic.

Here's a crazy story...

Lake Wawasee, IN, my buddy and I arrive and start to fish before the sun sets and a storm arrives. Well we get about 30 minutes in and my buddy Lance starts telling me he's heard stories of folks casting before a storm and their bait floats due to static. I laugh and tell him probably BS. Well I sh%t you not, 15 minutes later, I'm throwing a drop shot. I cast and didn't see it hit the water, we both look out and my line / bait is about an inch or so from the water. Right then it drops and lightning cracks the trees about 50 yards from us. We immediately drop our rods, fire up the boats, and head to the closest boat house. The skies opened and all hell broke loose. We rode it out in a boat slip. Once it passed, we considered going back out. But not after that. No way was I going back out.

Thats a pretty wild story. I remember as a kid being at a whatever fishing trade show/sportsmans show, I remember fish fishburne was there, haha, well, they had a little both about safety maybe it was TPWD or one of those, they had a graphite rod that was just a ball of filament by the reel. That showed me enough haha

Several years ago fishing a tournament on lake Belton, we were staying at the Super 8 off I35 in Temple and had set our alarm for 4:30 a.m. When it went off, my friend got up and turned on the TV to check the weather...the entire screen was colored red and they were talking a tornado corssing I 35 in Temple. We opened the door and car and truck alarms starting going off due to being hit with debris from the hotel roof, shingles ect..and we were seconds away from grabbing one of the mattresses and getting in the bathroom and it passed just to the north of us. Afterward we drove to the lake, launched by the dam and ran around to Temple Park where the take off for the tournament was and were the only boats on the water with the other boats being held in the parking lot by the tournament director. The day ended up being super nice and calm but the fishing was as bad as it gets.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago we are fishing a tournament on lewisville in the rain. We didn't have any fish and it began raining harder and harder, the kind of rain that is so heavy and loud enough to make it hard to hear, and my buddy said "should we try and go somewhere to get out of it for a while?" which we decided to do .....if we saw lightening. THe bilge was running constantly and when you thought it couldn't possibly rain harder it would, and I couldn't hear anything but everytime it would get harder, we would turn and look at each other like WTF? and then the fishing turned good for about 15-20 minutes and we put 4 keepers in the boat one of which ended up being big bass of the tournament. When the rain finally tapered off and stopped, it was time to head for weigh in, the sky had turned a beautiful color and the lake was like glass. When we got to weigh in only a few boats and the tournament director were there and infomed us that there was a tornado 26 miles to the east!
So I can confirm from my experience the fishing can be super good prior to and during rough weather and super poor afterwards.

Now here is the part that most of you probably will not believe, when we were heading to the ramp on Lewisville the lake looked like a mirror it was so smooth AND there was not another boat in sight, not a single one! I told my buddy that I had never seen nor do I expect to see that ever again. And now you know the rest....

Big lightning and thunder will jack up the shallow bite big time for several hours, sometimes the rest of the day. I’m like most of yall, won’t fish in it, but I’ll darn sure trailer the boat and wait for it to pass and go back out.