In many ways a fly fisherman's first good bonefishing guide is like his first girlfriend. The same adolescent hazard's pertain: fear of embarrassment and failure. In each instance there is a rite of passage, after which life is never quite the same.

Carlos Marin was not my first bonefishing guide. In previous years, I'd used guides on Cayman Brac, Little Cayman, and, briefly, in the Florida Keys. But somehow those relationships didn't click. In Florida, it was the lack of fish, compounded by our guide's disposition. My fishing partner and I had booked him at the last minute, pulling him away from his daughter's school play, which she had been rehearsing for weeks. Apparently his contract with the marina required him to take us, but that didn't mean he had to like it. His absence from her play cast a pall over the afternoon. In retrospect we all would have been better off at the play. Our guide would have been happier, and we would have saved money and seen exactly the same number fish.

On Cayman Brac the fishing was ruined by a philosophical difference: I was determined to catch bonefish on flies. The guide, Mr. Boden, was of the opinion that a bonefish would not take a fly unless it was first feeding on crushed minnows. He scoffed at my flies--Crazy Charlie, Bonefish Special, Mother of Epoxy. "No, they're no good," he said.

He believed so fervently in the effectiveness of minnows that he tossed a handful to the only tailing fish we saw all week. When the fish fled in a cloud of murky water, he offered that as evidence not of a failure of his method, but of the futility of fishing for bones in such shallow water. His method was to chum them in the depths of three to five feet, where I would cast to the feeding school--with a fly, though he would have preferred a minnow. It was more like bluefishing than bonefishing, but at least for the first time I felt the speed and power of a bonefish, and experienced that mind-boggling incongruity between size and strength. I also learned to tie a reasonable crushed minnow imitation.

Next year on Little Cayman, I had more success fishing alone without a guide. I seem to be better at following my own instincts than someone else's instructions. And I like to walk and wade alone. I do not like people reading over my shoulder, books or bonefish flats.

So the following year on Belize, I did not hire a guide in advance. Instead, I rented a four-wheeler, which I used to explore the island for wadeable flats that I could fish alone. I let my 13-year-old son, a non-fisherman, drive. When I tossed him the keys, he looked at me in joyful disbelief. He'd never driven a motorized vehicle before. when, on a straight empty stretch of road, I said to "open it up", he was even more incredulous. Normally he was bucking at the reins; now, suddenly without reins, he was tentative. He toyed with the throttle, slowly bit by bit opening it. He didn't realize that while he was testing the machine's throttle, I was checking his brakes. It was reassuring to see his natural restraints at work.

We saw many interesting sights that afternoon--huge lizards, strange birds, the funky sights of San Pedro, but only one very small wadeable flat. The rest were soft. That evening, fly rod in hand, I walked down the beach to the one wadeable flat. En route I passed a sign on the beach I hadn't seen before because we'd gone by road. The sign said, "Fly fishing--Tarpon Bonefish Permit." Staked a few yards offshore was a small skiff with a push pole protruding from the stern. Away from the water was a cinder-block bungalow, an American car, and a man washing it.

He was small, lean, with coppery skin and lips cracked from the sun. I said "hello." "Is that your sign?" I asked. He said it was. He continued washing his car. No hard sell and he took care of his equipment. I asked about the type of fishing he did. He said his fishermen cast flies to sighted fish. "No chum?" He seemed offended. I changed the subject. "What flies do you like?" "Crazy Charlie is good," he said.

Then he put down his rag, came over and inspected my rod, a nine-foot graphite for a seven-weight. He wiggled it and examined the reel. "How much backing?" I told him. I asked if he was free in the morning. He said he was. Still, I was not ready to commit. "I'm going out and try this flat," I said. "I'll check with you when I come back." "OK." He resumed washing his car. I was back within the hour.

IN THE MORNING THE WIND was from the southeast, too hard. "How long is this wind going to last?" I said. Carlos said that when he was washing his car yesterday, he heard the lizards cheep. "When the lizards cheep like that," he said, "it means one wind is going to stop and another is going to come. This is the one that has come." "But how long is it going to last?" I said. "That I cannot say."

It lasted three days. It blew hardest on day two, but it was on day one it had its most devastating effect. On day one it was a member of a conspiracy of elements--wind, nerves, inexperience--that ruined two hours of fishing. By nine-thirty I'd had a good chance on at least a dozen tailing bonefish, and I had not hooked a fish. Not one. My casts were too long, too short, too hard; the cadence of stripping was all wrong. By nine-thirty it was very quiet in Carlos's boat. Carlos was standing beside me on the bow, leaning on the push pole, looking quite dejected.

I wasn't feeling so well myself. I could feel the ego preparing to make a great plunge into a pool of self-recrimination. Somehow at the last minute, it righted itself and allowed me to make a rather sensible analysis of the situation: a) this was hard fishing under the best of circumstances, b) these were not the best of circumstances, c) I was new at this, the lessons of Cayman Brac had little carryover value, d) I had not touched a fly rod in five months, e) I did have some ability with a fly rod, and I was capable of learning. Given the same number of opportunities for the rest of the morning , I would connect. I would.

I patted Carlos on the back. "Don't get so discouraged," I said. "I'll get the hang of this. We'll do all right. You just keep showing me the fish."

"O.K.," he said, but he didn't sound convinced.

But, in fact, we did do OK, and by noon we had caught four fish, not large, "average-sized bones" he called them. Even that was generous, but the size didn't matter. At least we had caught something. Carlos had found them; I had seen them, cast to them, hooked them, fought them, and Carlos had landed them. The guide/client relationship had been consummated. I signed up for three more days, all he had available.

SAN PEDRO, ON THE ISLAND OF AMBERGRIS CAY, is two villages in one, two cultures. To the east, along the beach and the lagoon, are hotels, gift shops, dive boats, wind surfers, jet skis. The back side, the west, is a fishing village, a poor fishing village, with ramshackle housing, and the rubble and litter of real lives.

I was glad the bonefishing lay to the west, because the bonefishing did not feel like a "vacation." It felt like "real life," the center of life around which all else revolved. I had the same feeling each morning as we rode out to the bonefish flats, through the narrow mangrove-choked channel, then out onto the shallows, sun rising behind us, surprised birds blossoming all around and who knew what ahead? It was not a fleeting sensation, but one that grew more insistent every morning, until by week's end it had taken on words: "more time in skiffs, less time on shore." Not a promise or a resolution, but the solution to a problem I hadn't even known existed, but that my mind apparently had been working on behind the scenes all along. In fishing circles these epiphanies fall under "personal growth."

On day two I caught five fish, missed four, and was the recipient on one pat on the back, one "good job," and one happy profanity when a long, last-ditch cast to a trio of departing fish landed miraculously on target. "Sheeeit!" Carlos said, as the lead fish turned, took, felt the hook, and then transformed my reel into a small musical instrument. But on this occasion Carlos's voice, its spontaneity, its pitch, was more pleasing to the ear than the reel's song.

On day three, I caught another five fish, missed others, but this morning there were few compliments, and few comments on obvious mistakes. It wasn't necessary. By now he knew my limitations--my major one, the most frustrating to us both, was my inability to see the fish. If I could see them clearly, I could usually get the fly there, but too often he would point to fish, and I would see only an amorphous mix of glare and mottled water.

"How can you not see the fish when they are right there?" I couldn't answer. Then out of the impenetrable haze, fish would emerge into my field of vision. There had to be more to this than savvy.

"Let me see your glasses," I said. I put them on and saw a different world. Carlos's glasses had brown lenses. Through them the flats were not nearly so lovely as seen through my own bluish-green tinted prescriptions. Passing clouds were like patches of rust, but by-God you could see. It was like looking at an X-ray of the flats. Here was a patch of turtle grass, and there was a fish, and never should the two be confused. I was hoping he would like my glasses as much as I liked his, that he would overlook the refractive error and be seduced by the lovely colors. No such luck. He took one look through mine and handed them back in disgust. "I don't like that color." And neither anymore did I.

At exactly quitting time, high noon, the visibility issue came to a very satisfying conclusion. Carlos was slowly poling us off the flats into somewhat deeper water, which through my glasses appeared bottomless and the color of turquoise. I was mesmerized by the color, and the warmth of the sun, and the soft breeze. Fish seemed out of the question. Then Carlos interrupted my reverie. "There's a bunch of fish you'll see," he said.

And so I did. A school of about a dozen was hovering not on the bottom, but just beneath the surface, their outlines dark, gray, distinct...like zinc on turquoise. The school was downwind, and gave me my best fish of the day, like a parting gift, a donation to the visually impaired.

Day four began with the same sort of generosity as day three ended, even more so. There was no wind, we had three good fish in less than an hour, and I was thinking, "This is the day it all comes together. Today, double figures!" Then something happened. I'm not sure exactly what, but the next three hours were a reprise of the early hours of day one. I couldn't do anything right. I made sloppy casts, broke fish off, failed to see the hook, couldn't see the fish. It wasn't all my own doing. Some of it was bad luck, a fly simply pulling out of an apparently well-hooked fish; a good fish finding and wrapping the only mangrove within a hundred yards; a fish sighted, hooked, landed, turned out to be not a bonefish but a shad. "Damn," I said, when I saw it was the "wrong" species.

None of this bothered Carlos in the least. He took it all in stride. When the hook fell out, he shrugged and said, "That is nothing. It happens all the time." When the fish wrapped the mangrove, he reminded me just the day before I had said how nice it was the fish never wrapped the mangroves. Now he seemed pleased that one had. His eyes said "Better to lose the fish than lose the respect for the fish. Any fish." He handled the shad as gently and respectfully as if it had been a trophy bone. He unhooked it and held it in the sunlight and admired it.

"Nice, isn't it?" he said. I said, "Yeah, right, of course it is." To show my heart was in the right place I took a picture of the shad. "I still can't help but be disappointed," I said, as I put the camera down. Carlos released the fish and looked up at me with what I believe was pity. "Poor gringo," his eyes said, "poor impoverished gringo, who can only like one type of fish."

Still I kept screwing up, and each screwup left me angrier. By noon, quitting time, I was dejected as Carlos had been that first morning. We had come full circle. this time he patted me on the back. "Maybe you are just tired," he said. "I'm not tired", I said, "I'm pissed." Again he looked at me with pity. "Poor gringo. Fishing makes him angry."

I sat down and looked around at the enormous expanse of flats; the patterns of blues and greens and whites; the wading birds; mangroves; the blue sky and scattered passing clouds. If I were angry in the midst of such plenty, then I really hadn't learned much about bonefishing. I may have learned a few things about how and where to cast, how to strip the fly, play the fish, and so on, but those were lessons of basic literacy. There was more to it than that. There was an attitude, a state of mind one needed. I cannot accurately describe it because I have never been there. I operated on either side of it, swinging wildly from one extreme to the other, from insecurity to overconfidence with no stops in between. But I have seen irrefutable evidence of this attitude on Carlos's face, in the pleasure he takes in fish, in all fish. It was clear where his true allegiance lay.

I seriously doubt that this state of mind can be "acquired" in the way that we might acquire another piece equipment. Possibly it can be absorbed over time. Time, the great enemy of bonefishing. More so even than money. Money is an obstacle. Money can be rationalized. More to the point, money can be borrowed, quietly with no one being the wiser. Time requires a public commitment. Time implies a seriousness of purpose, and people serious about fishing are generally considered not to be serious people. Unless, of course, they make a living at it. Then we all envy and look up to them, and wonder why the hell we didn't think of it earlier, before we had committed ourselves to the stock market or medicine.

CARLOS SAID MANY RICH PEOPLE, many doctors, come to Belize to fish, and sometimes they leave him flies and other pieces of equipment. Some even leave their fly rods, expensive graphite fly rods. I wondered why? As a tip? Money would make a better tip, and how much fly fishing gear can Carlos use?

In retrospect, I think it is so they can leave a part of themselves there, where they feel they belong and long to be. So that when they are back in New York, or Seattle, or Maine, they will know that a part of themselves is alive and well fishing in Belize.

One thing to remember when saying goodbye to guides: they always mean more to you than you do to them. It has to be that way. We have--what?--a handful of guides in a lifetime, if we're lucky. They have hundreds of clients. With them, it's always easy come, easy go. So there's no point getting emotional with your goodbyes, no point wondering, "Was it as good for him as it was for me? Will he remember me a year from now?" It wasn't and he won't, and there's really nothing to say when you leave except, "See you later." Anyway, that's all I said. Then I dumped the contents of one fly box into Carlos's palm and headed back up the beach.