When Catfish Don't Sleep
Moonlight silvered the river's wrinkles as I waded into the thigh-deep current. The cicadas' hum dissolved into the sticky August air, replaced by the gurgle of water hugging my waders. My fluorescent bobber danced between shadows cast by cypress knees – those gnarled sentinels guarding the Mississippi backwaters.
'Should've brought the bug spray,' I muttered, slapping a mosquito drilling into my neck. Three hours into the night shift, my cooler held only two channel cats barely longer than my hand. The thermos of bitter gas station coffee churned in my gut.
Then the clicker screamed. Not the polite zipping of a curious catfish, but the sustained wail of something primal. My baitcasting reel became a live thing, bucking against the rod strap as 50lb braid hissed through guides. 'Steady now,' I croaked, though my knees trembled like saplings in floodwater.
Twenty minutes later – or was it an hour? – the beast surfaced. Moonlight glinted on armor-plated flanks wider than my torso. Its whiskers bristled like barbed wire as we locked eyes. The line snapped with a pistol-crack, leaving only moon rings quivering where legend had breached.
Driving home past shuttered bait shops, I grinned at the purple dawn. Some defeats taste sweeter than victories.
