When the Moonlight Bites

3:17AM. The coffee in my thermos had gone cold, but the Mississippi night air kept me alert. I'd been stalking this stretch of riverbank for weeks, convinced the flathead catfish here moved like underwater panthers. My 编织线 felt taut against calloused fingers as I checked the drag - third time in fifteen minutes.

The first strike came just as fireflies started blinking. Something grabbed my cut bait with a vengeance, bending the rod into a question mark. 'Not another snag,' I muttered, recalling yesterday's lost 铅坠. But then the 'snag' surged upstream, peeling line like a possessed sewing machine.

Forty-three minutes later, waist-deep in black water and laughing like a madman, I cradled a whiskered brute thicker than my thigh. Its tail slap left a bruise I'd wear proudly for weeks. As I released it, the orange glow of dawn revealed tire tracks in the mud - seems someone had been watching from the dark.