When the River Whispered at Dawn

The hiss of my thermos opening cut through the 4:15 AM silence. Steam curled upward to meet the mist hovering over Montana's Jefferson River, where the water smelled of wet granite and something electric – the kind of air that makes your spinnerbait tremble before it even hits the surface.

My waders squeaked as I shuffled toward the undercut bank. 'Should've brought the green pumpkin craw,' I muttered, watching a crayfish scuttle over river-smoothed stones. Three casts with a topwater frog only yielded disappointed swirls. The river was playing chess, not checkers.

Sunrise painted the cliffs orange when it happened – a sharp *pop* from my reel's drag system. The rod arched like a question mark as twenty inches of wild brown trout revealed itself in a silver flash. 'Easy now,' I whispered to us both, fingers burning from the fluorocarbon line digging into my palm.

When I finally cradled the iridescent creature, its gills flared like opera gloves. The release sent it darting back into liquid shadows. Somewhere downstream, a kingfisher laughed. I stayed kneeling in the shallows long after the ripples disappeared, water seeping through a forgotten hole in my left knee pad.