A quiet night of fishing turned into a desperate battle for survival when a 71-year-old Florida man was dragged into a canal by an alligator — and fought the beast off with his bare hands and fishing pole.

James Grayson McMicken had grabbed his fishing gear and taken his bulldog with him to the canal behind his home in North Fort Myers on a Friday evening.

He had just cast his line when an alligator suddenly exploded out of the water and clamped its powerful jaws around his leg.

“I started reeling and it jumped out of the water and grabbed me,” McMicken told WPLG News.

The massive reptile pulled him down the bank and into the canal before beginning to roll with him in the water.

With his life on the line, McMicken remembered a piece of advice he had heard about surviving an alligator attack.

He jammed his thumb into one of the animal’s eyes before turning his fishing pole into a weapon.

“He rolled me down off the bank into the water,” McMicken recalled. “I stuck my thumb in his eye and I just took that fishing pole and jabbed him in that other eye and jabbed him and jabbed him and jabbed him.”

The struggle seemed to last forever, he said, although the terrifying encounter was likely over within moments.

“It seemed like forever, but it wasn’t that long,” McMicken said. “But then he turned loose.”

McMicken believes targeting the alligator’s eyes saved his life.

“I’ve always heard that if you got no other choice, hit them eyes,” he said. “And that’s what got him off of me.”

But escaping the alligator was only the beginning of his ordeal.

Badly injured and struggling to move, McMicken still had to make it back to his house. That was when his loyal bulldog stepped in to help.

“I’d have never made it crawling this far, so I called my dog over,” he said. “She stood there and let me get up on her back to where I could get stood up.”

With the dog supporting him, McMicken managed to reach his home, where his wife cleaned his wounds.

He then collapsed into a chair and passed out from exhaustion.

His family rushed him to the hospital, where the story of his incredible escape quickly spread among the medical staff.

“All the nurses on the floor had to come by and go, ‘Wow, you did what?’” McMicken said.

Despite the frightening attack, the lifelong fisherman has no plans to let the alligator scare him away from the water.

“I’m going to do everything I can not to die,” he said. “No gator is going to run me off.”

As of July 2, officers and trappers with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had not located the alligator, according to WFTV News.

McMicken is now back home recovering and says he plans to return to fishing as soon as he is able.

He will, however, be much more cautious the next time he approaches the water’s edge after dark.