When the River Woke Before Dawn

The pickup truck's clock read 4:15 when gravel started crunching beneath my tires. Somewhere in the predawn darkness, the Au Sable River was breathing through its veil of mist. I patted the worn topwater lure in my shirt pocket – the same one that fooled that trophy smallmouth three seasons back. Its hooks had drawn blood from my thumb last summer, leaving a crescent scar that still itched when storms rolled in.

Fog clung to the water like smoke as I waded in. My first cast sent concentric rings pulsing across obsidian surface, the popper's splash echoing off banks still blurred in charcoal shadows. 'They'll hit at daybreak,' I whispered to the thermos of bitter coffee, its steam mixing with river chill curling off my waders.

Three fruitless hours later, the sun had burned through the mist to reveal submerged logs I'd been methodically working. My shoulders ached from repetitive casting. The topwater lure lay discarded in my tackle box, replaced by every plastic creature in my arsenal. Even the bluegills had stopped nipping at my line.

'One last drift,' I muttered, tying on the scarred old popper with numb fingers. The lure landed beside a skeletal birch log with a fat 'plunk.' Before I could twitch the rod, the water exploded in a silver geyser. My braid sang through the guides as the smallmouth tailwalked across current, its bronze flank flashing like liquid amber in the morning light.

When I finally lipped the thrashing beauty, dawn's warmth had reached the riverbed. Mayfly nymphs swirled in sunlit eddies where the monster smallmouth had lain in wait. The scar on my thumb stung pleasantly as I watched her disappear into the coffee-colored depths, her escape sending concentric rings across the water – perfect mirror images of that first hopeful cast.