When the Fog Lifted

3:17AM showed on my weathered Casio as the truck headlights sliced through pre-dawn mist. The scent of damp cypress trees clung to the air, that peculiar mix of sweet decay and fresh algae I only ever find in Everglades backwaters. My lucky jig head - the one with teeth marks from last season's trophy snook - clicked rhythmically against the tackle box with every pothole.

'You're nuts,' my shadow Matt chuckled from the passenger seat, 'nobody fishes brackish water in zero visibility.' But I knew what the tide charts didn't show - how redfish school like liquid copper when fog messes with their lateral lines.

First three casts yielded nothing but soggy mangrove leaves. Then, as the sun bled orange through the haze, my line twitched in that telltale stutter-step rhythm. 'Not a crab,' I whispered, thumb pressing the braid to feel the pulse. The rod arched sudden and violent, drag screaming like a tea kettle. For seven glorious minutes, it was just me and whatever beast had inhaled my soft plastic, its runs sending silvery shockwaves through the fog-curtained flat.

When the mist finally lifted, my shaking hands cradled a redfish so vibrant it looked dipped in molten pennies. We released her facing the newborn sun, her tail kick sending ripples across water now mirror-clear. Sometimes I think the swamp shows its truth only when it thinks you're not looking.