Chris Dombrowski was playing a numbers game: two passions--poetry and fly-fishing; one child, with another on the way; and an income hovering perilously close to zero. Enter a miraculous email: Can't go, it's all paid for, just book a flight to Miami.

Thus began a journey that would lead to the Bahamas and to David Pinder, a legendary bonefishing guide. Bonefish are prized for their elusiveness and their tenacity. And no one was better at hunting them than Pinder, a Bahamian whose accuracy and intuition were virtuosic. He knows what the fish think, said one fisherman,...