Seriously, sturgeon scare the crap out of me

In the early grey morning, the fisherman unloaded his gear on the shore of The Great Lake. He set a bucket of minnows at his side, unfolded the old camping chair, and settled in with his pole for a quiet morning. The jagged break wall was empty. In the not so far distance, the city was only barely awake. It was damp and chilly in the spray of the waves, and he pulled his hooded sweatshirt close around his neck.

There are things to think about and things to not think about, as you sit on slick rocks and stare ahead but not behind you. The fisherman thought about his job, his yard work, this girl he knew when he was about 25. The waves curled quietly towards him, and away again. The perpetual October clouds stubbornly refused to let the sun break.

A man walked towards him on the break wall, and stood about 50 feet away, looking out at the lake. The fisherman noticed him, and took stock. No fishing equipment, no chair. The stranger was young, and made no movement to acknowledge him. Just stood there, staring at the water.

Our man became uneasy. There was no else at the shore, no other fishermen, which was to be expected in late October, early morning, before morning. Days like this had no morning. He tried to ignore his silent companion, and concentrate on the slight movements of the pole, being sucked in and out. He tried to think about that girl again. She had dirty blonde hair, and had danced at the bar to Bon Jovi. He had liked her then, drank with her. He couldn’t remember her name, which bothered him. Fifteen years? 20 years. He took a drink from his thermos, and remembered the way she had clutched at his neck, making out in his Buick at 3 am. Was it Heather? Crystal? She had stopped coming to the bar suddenly, and people had talked about a boyfriend, a pregnancy, probation? Years before he had met Whitney, and before the kids and the house in Brookpark. Whitney had liked to come with him to the lake when they first met. How excited she had been to catch her first fish. But then work came, and the boy, and now she merely nodded at him and went back to sleep when he woke up on Sundays morning and took out the tackle box. He thought about taking them out for breakfast when he got back. He would take them to IHOP, she loved the stuffed French toast.

When he turned to look again, the man was gone. He had left as silently as he had come. The fisherman glanced up and down the path, but there was no sign of him. He buried his hands in the sweatshirt.

Suddenly the pole went slack. He reeled it up, expected that the line had been caught in the rocks, and took out his pocket knife to cut it off. What a bitch, to lose that hook. But when he pulled it up, the line was broken, it slipped out of the waves like floss.

Underneath the waves, a dark shape moved.