When the River Whispers at Dawn

The pickup truck's headlights carved tunnels through swamp mist as I crept down the levee road. Somewhere in the predawn darkness, the Mississippi's current was tugging at submerged logs where flatheads prowled. My thermos of bitter gas station coffee rattled in the cup holder - a poor substitute for sleep, but the full moon tide wouldn't wait.

By first light I was thigh-deep in the backwater eddy, fingers tracing the fluorocarbon leader for nicks. Catfish don't care about pretty casts, so I lobbed the cut shad upstream like tossing a grenade. The strike came violent - not the tentative nibbles of channels, but that heart-stopping thunk of a flathead claiming its breakfast.

For twenty minutes we danced. The rod bowed until the cork grip groaned. Twice I felt the line rasp against submerged timber, the neon-green topwater frog in my back pocket forgotten as adrenaline narrowed my world to singing braid and throbbing rod. When the beast finally rolled in the shallows, its whiskered maw wide enough to swallow a football, I understood why old-timers call them 'yellow demons'.

As the released giant melted back into the coffee-colored water, a bald eagle cried overhead. My shaking hands relaced the leader, the river's secrets safe once more beneath its swirling surface.