When the Fog Lifted

3:17am showed on my dashboard clock when the headlights caught the fog swirling over Lake Serenity's boat ramp. The humid air smelled of decaying lily pads and something else – maybe promise? My lucky fishing hat, the one with the rust-stained brim from last season's musky encounter, felt damp against my forehead.

'Just twenty casts,' I whispered to the mist, rigging my rod with a chartreuse tube jig. The first dozen retrieves produced nothing but algae kisses. Then came the subtle tap-tap that every bass angler recognizes – not a strike, but curiosity. I let the lure drop. One Mississippi. Two. The line jumped alive.

Daybreak found me wrestling a twin-engine fog bank and a fish that bent my medium-heavy like a willow branch. When the smallmouth finally surfaced, its golden flanks shimmering through vapor, the lake exhaled – revealing sunlight dancing on the far shore where three more blowups rippled the water.