When the Fog Lifted

The crunch of gravel beneath my boots echoed through the marina parking lot at 4:17 AM. A horned owl's call sliced through the mist as I loaded the jon boat, my thermos of bitter diner coffee leaving condensation rings on the tackle box. Lake Michigan's surface hissed like a restless serpent, swallowing the beam of my headlamp whole.

By sunrise, my fingers had gone numb from rigging jig heads. Three smallmouth bass mocked me from the livewell, their yawns visible through the plastic walls. I was debating whether to eat my soggy sandwich when the fog bank rolled in - thick enough to chew.

'Now you've done it,' I muttered, squinting at the compass that suddenly seemed written in hieroglyphics. The electric motor's whir sounded different when the world shrunk to a 20-foot radius. That's when the water erupted.

Not a strike, but a full-blown piscine rebellion. Smallmouths boiled the surface, chasing shad into the fog's cotton walls. My jig barely touched water before the rod doubled over. For thirty glorious minutes, bronze-backed phantoms materialized from the mist, their jagged gill plates scraping my palm during releases.

When the fog lifted at 9:03 AM, the frenzy stopped as abruptly as it began. I sat clutching an empty coffee cup, the boat now floating in a sea of sparkling blue normality. Somewhere beneath me, a smallmouth gulped water and blew bubbles at my naivety.