When the Ripples Spoke in Moonlight

3:17AM. My thermos of bitter coffee left condensation rings on the hard bait tackle box as the truck tires crunched over crushed oyster shells. Lake Martin's moonlit surface shimmered like discarded mercury, the cypress knees casting skeletal shadows where I'd seen monster crappie breach at dusk.

'Try the deep drop-offs first,' my fishing partner Matt had advised. But the fishfinder remained stubbornly blank until sunrise painted the water amber. My wrists ached from jigging when a sudden swirl erupted near submerged logs - not the lazy circles of turtles, but violent champagne bubbles of a feeding frenzy.

'Switch to jerkbaits,' I muttered, fingers fumbling frozen knobs on my spinning reel. The lure hit the water with a slap. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Then the rod nearly leapt from my grip as something primal surged beneath.

Twenty minutes later, waist-deep in numbing water to net the 14-inch slab crappie, I noticed the scars along its flank - three parallel grooves from some ancient predator. Its gills flared defiantly before disappearing into blackwater. The mist rising off the lake seemed to whisper that we're all just temporary players in these ancient depths.