It's really hard to do because within the cloud each water droplet contains a tiny bit of charge. The air between them is an insulator. The cloud is many cubic miles. So to extract the charge you either need to touch every droplet, or make a spark between each droplet and a neighbouring one (which is what happens during a lightning strike).
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I wonder if instead of the bolt itself we could capture the charge accumulation on a continuous basis
That might be "easier" in some aspects
It's really hard to do because within the cloud each water droplet contains a tiny bit of charge. The air between them is an insulator. The cloud is many cubic miles. So to extract the charge you either need to touch every droplet, or make a spark between each droplet and a neighbouring one (which is what happens during a lightning strike).