By Tom Joseph

“Tim. They right in front of you. See ’em? Big school, Tim.” Hussein stood at my right shoulder, pointing. He didn’t even have his polarized glasses on.

I pulled my hat down and peered into the turquoise water of the Belizean lagoon, trying to distinguish between the brown swirling clumps. Shouldn’t be that difficult—the one that was the school of bonefish should be moving. I cast at one.

“No, Tim. That grass. They over there now.”

It was hopeless. Either the fish moved before I could get off a cast, or the wind blew my fly far from its target. I couldn’t get my leader to lay straight out, so most of the notoriously skittish bones saw the curled line and spooked. My retrieve was too fast or too slow, too regular or too jerky. And when, by the greatest of coincidence, I got a strike, I set the hook too soon or too late.

Not that it mattered, but my name isn’t Tim, either.

I took a minute to reflect. I knew Hussein had done this hundreds of times, stood in waist-deep water trying to put some dumb American on fish. Yet the excitement in his voice was unmistakable, its measured quality that of a deep well of patience, not frustration. His wiry body gave off the same signal, coiled and ready, but for the moment securely fastened.

I cast at a clump. “Good shot. Strip, strip, wait. Now!” I set the hook. Fish on! My eight-weight fly line went zinging out as if attached to an arrow. I’d learned from fishing salmon—the hard way, of course—to keep clear of the reel handle, which can machine gun your hand at about 80 hammer-strokes per second. This fish was running at more like 800. My first bone.

The fish was three-quarters of the way across the lagoon when his run slowed. I began reeling, stole a glance at Hussein, who stood beside me, arms bent at the elbow, palms in, thumbs up, as if cupping a fly reel.

“Reel, Tim. Reel, reel, reel.” Suddenly, my line was running a million miles an hour straight at me. I must have had the fish well hooked, though, for despite the slack, he stayed on. I played several more runs until, eventually, I brought the fish close.

Kaboom. My line went smoking back out. What the—?

“Barra.”

I looked across the lagoon. Sure enough, instead of a twenty-inch bonefish at the end of my line, I was now attached to a four-foot barracuda.

“Dogfish,” said Hussein, resignation heavy in his voice.

“What do I do?”

He shrugged. I found out why in about twenty seconds when my line went limp. “Barra bit you off, scared all the bones. We try later.” He waded toward shore.

I reeled in my hookless line, followed him in. “Hey, Hussein. Thanks. That was fun.”

He adjusted the baseball cap over his jet-black hair. “Fun for me, too, Tim.” And though his taut and tawny Middle Eastern face was unsmiling, I knew he was telling the truth. Hussein was a true fisherman; fishermen tell stories, but they don’t lie.

Before coming to Belize, Hussein had never held a rod in his hand. A refugee from war-torn Beirut, Hussein somehow scraped the funds together to leave Lebanon in 1980. Out of money by the time he reached Belize City, Hussein shared a cab with a man who had a similar Semitic look. Mike Feinstein turned out to be an Israeli Jew. The unlikely duo became friends and eventually built Manta Resort together, carving the eleven-cabana retreat a machete slash at a time out of the four-acre mangrove island.

This Belizean atoll halfway around the world may have been an unlikely roosting spot, but here, on Glover’s Reef Atoll, Hussein had found not only a home but a calling. This year, his fifteenth, he’d resigned as manager so he could guide full-time. Taken a pay cut in order to put dumb Americans on fish they’d probably blow, and done it with a satisfied non-smile.

An eighty-square-mile atoll that rises from the depths of the Caribbean, Glover’s Reef is the furthest offshore of the three Belizean atolls, about thirty miles out. My wife Jeanne and I had cruised out on the Pelagic, the resort’s fifty-footer. An administrative snafu had us booked the week the resort was supposed to be shut down, so we shared the island with a skeleton crew. Talk about your desert islands.

The entire atoll was nearly as uninhabited. There was one kayak camp on the next island up, and, on the one after that, a government station to remind commercial fishermen that the twenty-by-four mile atoll and surrounding waters are all marine reserve. Hussein told us that there are 700 shallow reef patches on the inside, and only four cuts where a boat can pass through the surrounding barrier reef. Whereas the inside waters are no more than twenty-five feet deep, outside the reef the bottom drops quickly to a hundred feet, and after that in a sheer wall to half a mile. The contrast of the dark navy of the blue water, the blotchy blue-and-turquoise of the deep reef, and the aqua-and-sand of the inside made for a kaleidoscopic tidal wave of color. A guy could stare at that all day, if he weren’t busy bonefishing in the lagoon, trolling the outside for grouper, kings, tuna, and wahoo, or casting jigs for snapper on the inside.

Fishing first for subsistence, then as a guide, Hussein probably knows more about angling these waters than any other human. Considering his late introduction to the sport, his grasp of both equipment and technique was amazing. But his fish sense was even more so. Maybe he smelled them with his long Lebanese nose, maybe picked up their vibes with the twin radar dishes protruding from his ever-present baseball cap. Maybe it was something less tangible. It seemed Hussein, the wanderer, understood the ebb and flow of waters which twice a day are pulled from one end of the world to the other. Hussein had the tides in his soul.

We spent nearly all our waking hours that week with him, falling into an easy routine. Up at dawn for a morning troll, where we’d catch bonito, Spanish mackerel, barra, and, hopefully, something big. I learned the importance of heavy-duty tackle when a wahoo snapped a treble hook clean off a brand new Smitty, and another straightened a hook on my biggest Grandma. After that we used Hussein’s personal stash. His seven- and nine-inch Rapalas looked like they’d been chewed up in a meat grinder, but they held up. Jeanne got a thirty-five pound king and a forty pound grouper.

We’d come in before noon, so I’d have time to fish bones before lunch. Hussein usually accompanied me with his own fly rod, which he’d cast patiently, measuredly, successfully. He taught me to sneak up on fish in the shallows, their forked tails seductively wiggling in the air, staying upwind so I could cast better to them. I began seeing fish better, even catching some. What beauties bonefish are, shimmering silver, built like bullets. Each release left me full of pride and slime.

After a snooze in the hammock, it was more bones, or more trolling. When there was a lag in action, we talked of the state of the atoll, and of the world. I told Hussein that I was Jewish.

“My friend,” he said, “why do our people have to fight? What is the difference, my God or your God? Don’t we all have to live on the same Earth?” He shook his head sadly, and I recognized the weight that holds his face short of a smile. “I left all of my family in Lebanon. All. But here I have found something better. I have found peace.”

I think that’s what all fishermen are looking for.

Sometimes we had silences, too, where we ran a zigzag line between the deep blue Caribbean and the upreaching coral, or where we stopped to rock on the swells and watch the thin white line of the waves breaking on the barrier reef. Hussein sometimes seemed far away, but always, if there was a strike, he was on it instantly, goosing the throttle if he sensed a big fish, pulling in a line if it was in the way.

Late in the afternoon we’d return, switching to a tarpon-sized MirrOlure as we crossed into the shallows. We hooked one once and saw it jump high into the air and spit the hook before either of us could grab the rod. Then Hussein cleaned our supper on the pier which led to the thatched-roof bar and dining room built over the lagoon. We’d stay at the fish-cleaning station until sunset. There was blood in the water, fish-scent in the air, salt-spray on our faces, rum on our breath. And maybe a bit of the tides in our soul, too.

Hussein filleted, skinned, or scaled deliberately, threw the entrails to the nurse sharks that cruised in for supper, two reds and a light-colored one called Blondie. Sometimes a huge stingray would try to hide the carcasses by smothering them. Gigantic bonefish up to eight pounds swam inches from the sharks. I tried to catch them and failed. The sharks didn’t bother. Fortunately, neither did they bother with humans. Late one afternoon when I was bonefishing, one practically swam between my legs.

After catch-of-the-day dinner, we’d walk with Hussein to the entrance of the lagoon and shine flashlights on the eagle rays that swooped in for an evening foray. Hussein knew the “every when for every fish” at Glover’s Reef Atoll.

Of all the fish we caught that week, the most memorable were the headfish. Never did a half-day go by without bringing in one of that species. I learned to tell when one was on—I’d be playing a fish, and suddenly my line would go dead. Not limp, as if I’d been cut off, though. I’d reel in my still-heavy line, and on the end would be a head. Hussein could tell, by how cleanly the fish had been severed, whether it had been cut off by a shark or by a big wahoo, king mackerel or barracuda. The lone black fin tuna we caught was a half-tuna—the other half was a shark snack. We salvaged enough meat for a sushi appetizer. Our frequent catch of headfish proved there were countless monsters down there, just waiting for prey giving off distress signals. A sobering thought.

“And you let us swim and wade in those same waters?” I asked Hussein.

“Is different,” he answered, and of course it was.

That’s what we learned from Hussein. Every situation in his ocean was different, every moment fresh. Hussein knew the tide was always moving in his Belizean waters. We treasured the chance to hop on.