The Thermos Rule is simple and non-negotiable: nobody makes a cast until the first cup is poured. It started as a joke about patience. It became doctrine on a misty morning at a dock we won’t name, because the snook that live under it read the internet.
My brother-in-law broke the rule. Rod in hand before the thermos cap came off, first cast arcing out into the mist, beautiful, arrogant, doomed. The line came back with half a jig and a story he still tells wrong.
We poured the coffee. We waited the full ceremonial minute. And on the honest, rule-abiding first cast of the day, the water under the dock light folded in on itself and a snook the size of a boat fender came out of the shadow like it had been assigned to us.
Was it the coffee? The tide? The barometric something-or-other? We don’t investigate miracles at our dock. We just keep the thermos full and the first cast honest.