When the Fog Lifted, So Did My Luck

The marsh air clung to my skin like wet gauze as I poled the skiff through predawn darkness. Somewhere in this Louisiana backwater, redfish were tailing - I could smell their distinctive briny scent carried on the mist. My spinnerbait box lay open, its contents gleaming faintly under my headlamp's amber glow. 'Third time's the charm,' I muttered, remembering last week's snapped fluorocarbon line disaster.

By noon, doubt crept in like the incoming tide. Twelve casts. Twelve perfect presentations. Twelve times the fish ignored my offerings. The heat made my sunscreen-run eyes sting as I slumped against a cypress knee. That's when I heard it - the slurping sound of a predator cornering baitfish in the flooded grass.

My next cast landed softer than a heron's feather. The spinnerbait blade had barely started vibrating when the water exploded. The fish ran straight under the boat, my reel singing like a teakettle. For one terrible second, I felt the line grind against an oyster bed. Then the fog suddenly parted, sunlight glinting off the redfish's copper scales as it surged skyward in a shower of spray.

When I finally lipped the 28-inch beast, my trembling fingers found three barnacle cuts - and the sweetest victory of summer. The brackish water tasted like salt and triumph as I released her, both of us breathing harder than the humid air warranted.