When the Mist Betrayed My Lure

Three cups of coffee couldn't warm my fingers as the aluminum boat cut through dawn's silver veil. Lake Marion's notorious fog clung to my spinning reel like cold syrup, each rotation leaving damp fingerprints on the cork handle. I always fish the flooded cypress stumps this time of year – or at least I thought I did.

'Should've brought the glow-in-dark jigs,' I muttered, blindly retying a soft plastic that kept snagging phantom branches. The third cast produced a muffled 'plop' somewhere in the pearlescent gloom. Then nothing. Always nothing.

Sunrise came as a pale yellow smear. That's when I heard it – the distinct 'glug' of a bedding bass. My polarized lenses finally caught movement: crimson gills flaring through tea-colored water. The Senko trembled as it sank... one Mississippi... two... The strike bent the rod into a question mark I'm still answering.