When Dawn Bit Back

3:47AM blinked red on my dashboard as the truck tires crunched over oyster shells. Lake Fork's pre-dawn chill carried the sharp scent of pine needles steaming under dew. I patted my breast pocket - the worn leather wallet holding my grandfather's lucky fishing coin still there. 'Today's the day you finally outsmart those bucketmouths,' I whispered to the thermos of black coffee.

The familiar cove greeted me with suspicious stillness. My first cast with a swim jig sent concentric ripples through moonlit water. By the fifth retrieve, my shoulders remembered why they'd hated Monday mornings. 'Maybe the Senko?' I muttered, squinting at the mist now curling like phantom fingers across the surface.

Sunrise came as a pink sneeze across the eastern sky. That's when I saw them - nervous water bulleting toward my kayak. Heart hammering, I sent the wacky rig arcing overhead. The plop hadn't finished echoing when my line snapped taut. Rod bowed like Excalibur's scabbard, drag screaming like a banshee. 'Don't horse it!' I barked at myself as twenty feet out, a dinner plate-sized mouth breached, shaking morning stars from its gills.

When the 7-pounder finally lay glistening in my measuring board, I noticed the trembling in my knees. Not from the fight - from the electric purple sunrise now igniting the lake. The bass flipped its tail in farewell, sending droplets that caught fire midair. My laughter startled a heron into flight as I paddled back, the coffee long cold but my veins humming with something warmer.