When the Logs Came Alive

The mist clung to my waders like cold spiderwebs as I waded into Buttonwillow Cove. My spinning reel clicked softly, the sound swallowed by the swamp's morning hush. Three casts into the honey hole between submerged logs, my chartreuse spinnerbait kept coming back clean.

'Should've brought the topwater,' I mumbled, watching a gar's fin break the blackwater surface. The third log in the cluster suddenly erupted with a splash that sent my heart into my throat. Line screamed off the reel as something primal pulled toward the timber.

Twenty minutes later, cradling a bronze-back brute in the shallows, I noticed the braided line had sawed halfway through a waterlogged branch. The old cypress grinned its splintered teeth, keeping secrets of a hundred such ambushes.