When the River Whispers at Dusk

Beneath a pecan tree stained with last light, my boots sank into the muddy bank of the Mississippi backwaters. The air smelled of decaying cypress and something primeval – the kind of scent that makes your braided line feel thinner than a spider's thread. My grandfather's old coffee can bubbled with bullhead minnows, their whiskers tapping the metal in morse code I pretended to understand.

'Should've brought the heavier rod,' I muttered, watching twilight dragonflies dance over lily pads. The first cast sent a composite spinnerbait skittering across channels where the water turned from brown to black. For forty silent minutes, the river played dead.

Then the clicker screamed.

Something massive rolled near a submerged log, creating whirlpools that sucked in floating leaves. My drag protested as the creature bulldozed through roots that had drowned during the Reagan administration. When its flat head finally broke surface – wide enough to wear my hat as a monocle – the channel cat's barbels glistened like liquid mercury in the moonlight.

We bargained with the river for thirteen breathless minutes. It kept the hook. I kept the story.