Actually I still run around in the dark, mostly with a motor as my shoulder is no longer reliable. I am one of those with excellent night vision and have found, in the absence of fog, that I have excellent visibility. It's usually flatter at night on the salt, floating debris seems to show up real well, and I do dearly love to be in the water and fishing before everyone else. In popular spots sometimes that's the only way I get fish.

Now the one time I did something real hairy in the dark was 30 years or so ago on the Cowlitz - used to cross the river below the barrier dam in a little rowboat all the time to fish off the far bank. One morning it was foggy and the river was real high - actually had been out for a month and was dropping back in. Well, I put in about midnight and rowed across more by feel, finally did hit land just below the deadline in my usual spot, and didn't think much about it, just started glowballing, except when I hooked a fish that took off downstream and started to walk down all of a sudden I hit this channel with 4 feet of fast water running through it about 20 yards downstream - so did the fish and I promptly lost him in the trees. It turns out that in the high water the bank had washed out and the river was pouring into the backwater. Had I missed that bar by a couple more yards I would have gone over a 5 foot drop into the trees in the dark and likely be dead. Keep in mind that this was I spot I had been fishing for 10 years, that had always been stable, I knew what flow conditions were, and had no clue that anything had changed. It only takes once - got lucky that time.