When the Fog Lifted at Devil's Elbow

3:17AM showed on my waterproof watch when the truck tires crunched over the gravel parking lot. The '87 Coleman cooler in the truck bed rattled like a maraca, still holding last season's rusted spinnerbait I swore would work someday. Devil's Elbow lived up to its name - the cove's mist hung thicker than campfire smoke, swallowing my headlamp beam whole.

'Should've brought the depth finder,' I muttered, thumbing the unfamiliar knot on my new fluorocarbon leader. The third cast snagged something solid. Not log-solid. Alive-solid. My St. Croix rod doubled over before the line went slack. 'Son of a...' echoed across the water, answered by a mocking loon call.

Sunrise brought clarity in more ways than one. As the fog dissolved, so did my stubbornness. I switched to the beat-up Jitterbug from my dashboard - the one with paint chipped from that epic Smallmouth battle. The strike came during a lazy retrieve. Twenty yards of backing screamed off the reel, the smallie tail-walking through sunbeams like it was putting on a Broadway show.

My trembling hands didn't come from the fight. It was realizing the copper whistle in my vest pocket - the one I always rub before big catches - had been home on the dresser all morning.