When the Fog Lifted at Deadman's Bend

4:17AM showed on my watch's faint green glow as I stepped into the mist-shrouded shallows of the Mississippi backwater. The spinnerbait in my tackle box rattled like a snake's warning - my wife still laughs about the time one got tangled in our bedsheets. I waded carefully, the sucking mud pulling at my waders with each step.

By sunrise, I'd cycled through three lures without so much as a nibble. The fog clung stubbornly, turning the cypress stumps into ghostly sentinels. 'Should've brought coffee instead of pride,' I muttered, recasting my line toward a submerged log. That's when the heron exploded from the reeds, wings clattering like a malfunctioning reel - and took my lucky hat with it.

As I stared dumbfounded, the water erupted behind me. My rod doubled over, drag screaming like a banshee. For twenty glorious minutes, the smallmouth bulldogged through root clusters, its tail slaps echoing across the now-sunlit bayou. When I finally lipped the bronze warrior, fog-diamonded scales glittered like liquid amber.

The hat? Found it three weeks later, nested in by bluegills. The heron watches me now from the opposite bank every morning - we've reached an understanding.