When the River Whispers Secrets

Three hours before sunrise, my waders crunched through frost-kissed grass along the Suwannee's bank. The air smelled of wet limestone and anticipation. I patted the worn lucky spinnerbait in my vest pocket - the same one that failed me last season, now freshly sharpened.

'You're chasing ghosts,' my brother had laughed when I mentioned the rumored trophy largemouth here. But the river's chuckle over smooth stones said otherwise. First cast sent ripples across water so still it mirrored Orion's Belt above.

Dawn bled crimson across sky when it happened. My fluorocarbon line twitched not with a strike, but an impossible resistance - as if I'd hooked the riverbed itself. Then the 'bed' surged upstream. Drag screamed like a banshee as forty yards vanished in seconds.

'What in God's...' The words died when the smallmouth breached. Not the expected greenback, but a copper-colored leviathan twisting midair, water cascading off its armored sides. My knees went liquid. The rod's cork grip left permanent crescents in my palm.

When the line finally went slack at noon, I sat grinning in the shallows. The spinnerbait's skirt hung shredded, its hooks straightened. Sometimes the river doesn't give up fish - just stories worth blisters.