The Water Explodes at Sunrise

Three a.m. finds me sipping bitter gas station coffee, the dashboard glow illuminating my kayak’s bow. Dew hangs heavy in the Georgia pines as I slide into the Flint River’s inky current. 'Should’ve brought the thermos,' I mutter to a barred owl’s hollow call – the only soul awake besides me and the bass.

Moonlight ribbons dissolve into dawn’s gray wash when I reach the lily pad labyrinth. First casts sail into pockets with surgical precision. Popper. Frog. Nothing. The silence is so thick I hear dragonflies clipping the air. Hours bleed away; even the topwater lure feels heavy in my defeated hands. 'Maybe they’re deep today,' I wonder aloud, knuckling sleep from my eyes.

Then – a ripple. Not wind. Not turtle. Something huge bulged near the sunken cypress knee I’d passed six times. My wrist flicks a weightless worm rig. The fluorocarbon line goes taut mid-fall. 'Steady now...' I whisper as the rod arches toward water. A bronze flash erupts – not the expected pound-and-a-half schoolie, but a tank with shoulders. The drag screams like a teakettle. Kneeling in the kayak, I feel every headshake through the carbon grip. Ten minutes? Ten years? Time drowned in the thrash of green water. When my net finally scoops victory, her tail slaps a baptism across my sunburned face.

Back at the ramp, I watch the four-pounder kick free into murky green. The river gives, the river takes. Today, it gave just enough to bring me back tomorrow.