When the Fog Lifted at Deadman's Bend

My breath hung visible in the predawn chill as I stepped onto the dew-slick dock. Somewhere in the inky waters of the Colorado River bend, smallmouth bass were stirring – or so the old marina attendant had wheezed yesterday when I bought that cursed glow-in-the-dark spinnerbait. The rhythmic squeak of my tackle box handle seemed obscenely loud in the sleeping world.

First casts sliced through water smooth as obsidian. My grandfather's lucky raccoon tail charm swung from my rod tip – absurd, but I'd never fish without it. By sunrise, I'd cycled through every lure in my box. 'Maybe the old man was senile after all,' I muttered, watching a heron judge me from a half-submerged log.

The fog rolled in thick around 7 AM, reducing the world to a 10-foot radius. That's when I heard it – the unmistakable 'pop' of surface strikes echoing through the mist. My frozen fingers fumbled the line as I rigged a weightless worm on fluorocarbon leader, heart pounding like my old Evinrude's misfiring engine.

They hit on the fall. Smallmouth after smallmouth, their bronze flanks materializing ghost-like from the pearly water. The rod bent double as a monster surged under the dock pilings. 'Not today, sweetheart,' I crooned, thumb burning against the screaming drag. When the fog finally burned off, my cooler told the story – and the old raccoon tail still danced in the breeze.