Blind Willie’s Pool

My best friend at school was even keener on fly fishing than I was. Ian Kevin Edwards (known to us all as “Ike”) lived, breathed, and dreamed of catching fish, so much so that school attendance was, for him, very much a “secondary interest.” Despite frequent warnings from the headmaster, Ike seemed not to care about his education, and we all knew that if he wasn’t in school, he’d be sitting beside a lake or river casting a fly on the water. I was therefore not altogether surprised when one day he sidled up to me in the playground and discretely showed me a photograph of a fish he’d caught while playing truant the previous day.

“So?” I said, wondering why he’d bothered to take a photograph of such a small fish.

“Look at it again, you idiot,” he pressed.

Apart from a few battle scars to its flank, it looked like a perfectly normal fish. All I could do was shrug.

“Look at its eyes,” urged Ike. “The poor thing’s blind!”

Before he could explain why that was significant, the bell went, and we hurried into class. While calling the register, our form teacher paused when he got to Ike’s name. “Good of you to join us, Ike. I believe the headmaster is looking forward to seeing you in his study at break.”

The head was a man named Mr. Baker, and a summons from him was not something to be taken lightly. As one who was bottom of the class in most subjects, I’d been summoned to see him more times than I cared to remember, hence I wasn’t exactly keen when Ike asked me to go with him for moral support.

As we waited outside the headmaster’s study, I pressed Ike on what he was planning to say. “Don’t worry,” he assured me. “I have a plan.”

When we were at last admitted, Mr. Baker looked up and stared first at Ike, then at me. “Mitchell, I don’t recall asking you to attend,” he growled.

“No sir,” was all I managed to reply, as I had absolutely no idea why I was there.

“As for you, Ike,” continued Mr. Baker, “I’m looking forward to hearing why you failed to honor us with your presence yesterday. By my reckoning, that’s the third time this month.”

“Sir, I was working on my end-of-term project and sort of got carried away with it,” explained Ike. “I asked Mitchell to come along this morning as I’m going to need his help completing it.”

That was news to me, but I didn’t let on.

“Ike, this had better be good,” he warned. “Because if it’s not, you’ll be leaving us before the end of term. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes sir,” said Ike, who then produced the photograph and laid it on Mr. Baker’s desk.

“It’s a fish,” said Mr. Baker, sounding bemused. “Are you telling me that you spent all day yesterday catching this just to avoid double maths?”

“It’s not just a fish, sir,” explained Ike. “It’s a wild brown trout.”

“I don’t care if it’s a red herring,” snarled Mr. Baker. “I’m very sorry if your education gets in the way of your piscatorial activities, but this is a school, and you can’t just come and go as you please!”

“Sir, look at it again,” pleaded Ike. “Do you not see anything strange about it?”

Mr. Baker put on his glasses and leaned forward to examine the picture more closely. He then shrugged, having seen nothing of particular note.

“The poor thing is as blind as a bat,” said Ike, as though that explained everything.

“So, what’s that got to do with it?” asked Mr. Baker.

“Sir, trout have excellent eyesight. They usually take a very small fly struggling on the surface or a tiny nymph underwater. If this fish is blind, how could it possibly have survived to reach maturity?”

He had Mr. Baker’s interest at that.

“Trout are very sensitive to vibration,” continued Ike. “They have a lateral line along the whole length of their body, which enables them to detect very subtle movements, even those on the bank. They also have a very keen sense of smell.”

“Do they?” asked Mr. Baker, clearly intrigued by that.

“Oh yes, sir. A shark can smell blood in the water from miles away and, if you ever go fishing for pike, the best method is to get a really smelly old herring, embed it with hooks, and place it in the river. A pike will follow that scent from a long way downstream.”

“Then surely that explains it? This fish has either survived by detecting the movement of a fly, or perhaps it relies on its keen sense of smell.”

“But sir, I caught it on one of these,” said Ike, producing a small beaded pheasant tail nymph from his pocket and placing it on the desk.

“Did you make this yourself?” asked Mr. Baker, picking up the nymph to examine it.

“Yes, sir,” said Ike. “Mitchell and I tie all our own flies. My father lets us use his fly-tying bench.”

Mr. Baker held the nymph up to the light. “Well, that’s very intricate work,” he acknowledged, clearly impressed.

“Thank you, sir. But you’ll appreciate that it has no scent whatsoever to help a fish to find it.”

“So what’s your explanation?”

“Sir, I think it responded to the sound of the weighted nymph entering the water. You see, I caught it in a pool where there’s a small waterfall that is probably fed from an underground stream in a cave directly above it. I think the fish may have been swept over the waterfall after all the rain we’ve had recently, landed on the rocks below, then wriggled its way into the pool where I caught it. That would also explain the injuries to its flank.”

“Quite possibly,” conceded Mr. Baker.

“Then, sir, does that not beg the question as to whether there might be other blind fish living in a stream inside the cave? If so, are they a species that has genetically adapted itself to those conditions? I mean, eyes wouldn’t be much use in a dark cave, would they?”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” said Mr. Baker.

“Sir, I remember our form teacher telling us about the flightless cormorants on the Galapagos Islands. They gradually dispensed with wings once they found it easier to catch their prey underwater. Could that theory not apply to this trout? If so, it would make an excellent topic for an end-of-term project.”

I could see that Mr. Baker was actually quite impressed. He next turned to me. “So Mitchell, what do you expect to contribute to this project?”

The truth was that while all Ike had said intrigued me, I had no idea why he was involving me. “Sir, I think it would be well worth exploring,” I answered, trying to be as supportive as possible.

“Yes, so do I,” agreed Mr Baker. “You’re suggesting this is evolution in action and, as such, it would indeed make an excellent subject for your project. But you’re supposed to discuss that with your form teacher before starting work on it.” At that, he seemed to relax slightly. “So, how do you propose to proceed from here?”

Ike once more took up our case. “Sir, tomorrow is Saturday, and I was thinking that perhaps Mitchell and I could return to the pool to take some samples of the water. You know the sort of thing—acidity, temperature, etc. We’ll then climb up the hill and explore the small cave, where I think we’ll find an underground stream.”

“Have you been inside this cave before?”

“No sir, not right inside. The tunnel is very low, but we should be able to crawl through it.”

“Not on your own, you won’t! You’ll need a responsible adult to come with you. Caves can be very dangerous places, particularly if they haven’t been properly surveyed to make sure they’re safe.”

“Then will you come with us, sir?” asked Ike, rather cheekily.

I could see that Mr. Baker was flustered by that. “I’m bit too old to go crawling about in caves,” he told us. “And if you’re planning to do so on your own, you must first both get your parents’ consent.”

“Of course, sir,” said Ike, though I knew he hadn’t the slightest intention of doing so any more than I had.

Ike called for me at about 9:30 the next morning, and we set off together on our bikes. Having followed the road to the heath, we turned off onto a track and then made our way across open country until we came to a narrow stream. There was thick gorse on both banks of the stream so that you could barely see the water, but we followed it until the ground became too steep for our bikes. We therefore dismounted and pushed them the rest of the way until we eventually reached the pool in which Ike had caught the fish.

It was like a secret pool, fringed on one side by rocks and on the other by tall reeds. On the far side there was a thin curtain of water that seemed to splash down from a small aperture in the rocks above, a fall of about 3 meters. What was remarkable about it was that the water in the pool was crystal clear, and we could see trout rising—not great splashy leaps, more like slides to the surface to sip their quarry down, leaving barely a ripple. We needed a picture of a “sighted” fish from the pool for comparison purposes, so we spent an hour or so fishing. Ike used a nymph while I used a small blue-winged olive and, between us, we managed to catch three lively little brownies, all of which we carefully released back into the pool once we’d photographed them. It really was a great fishing spot, and I’d have been happy to stay all day, but Ike was keen to get on.

Having taken a sample of the water in a bottle and some temperature readings, we scrambled up to the top of the rocky outcrop, where we found a horizontal slit in the rock. “That’s the entrance to the cave,” explained Ike.

I have to say that it looked to be a very tight squeeze, but Ike led the way, wriggling himself through the narrow gap.

“It’s not too bad in here,” he called back to me, his voice echoing from somewhere inside.

As it turned out, he was right. Once inside, it wasn’t possible to stand up, but we did manage to crawl forward on our hands and knees until we reached another narrow gap that was so tight we had to empty our pockets and breathe in just to get through it. Once we’d managed that, we found ourselves in a much larger cavern, where it was completely dark. Using flashlights, we found a small spring from which water flowed freely, albeit not as a stream as we expected; rather, it ran across the cave floor in a thin sheet until it reached another pool at the far end. Because of the refraction, it was difficult to see how deep it was. As the pool was replenished by the spring the level rose, and the excess water flowed over a small lip then cascaded into the one below—the one where Ike had caught his fish.

As we waited for our eyes to get used to the dark, we heard what sounded like condensation falling from the roof of the cavern. We soon realized that it wasn’t water we could hear, but bat droppings. As each one hit the water, there was a plop followed by a swirl of activity as a small fish took the dropping, attracted by the sound of it.

“Ah!” said Ike. “That explains it!”

“Surely they don’t eat bat droppings?” I queried.

“They will if there’s nothing else,” said Ike. “In fact, I’ve heard it said that fish feast on all sorts of things we put into the sea, including raw sewage.”

With that, Ike took another water sample for comparison before we retraced our steps. Once outside, we were both of us grinning broadly as we made our way home.

We worked on the project all day on Sunday. Then, once back at school the following day, we went to the science lab and analyzed the water samples, although that didn’t reveal anything significant. Using that limited data and the photos we’d taken, we put our project together over the next few days, then left it on Mr. Baker’s desk for him to see. Later that day, he summoned us both to his study.

“Well,” said Mr. Baker. “I have to say this is an excellent piece of work. You have both shown us a side of you we none of us knew existed. I think this project could well be a contender for the school prize at the end of term and, quite frankly, I think the local paper would be interested in what you’ve discovered. That would be a feather in the cap for the school and . . . ” He stopped there, suddenly aware that we were both very quiet.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You should both be very proud of yourselves.”

Ike answered for us both. “Sir, we would prefer not to tell anyone else about it in case word gets out and the pool attracts hordes of others. It’s a delicate natural environment and in order to protect and preserve it, we feel that the location of Blind Willie’s Pool should remain a secret.”

“I think that’s a laudable sentiment,” Mr. Baker admitted, somewhat reluctantly. “But who on earth is Blind Willie?”

“Sir, that’s the name we gave to the fish Ike caught,” I explained. “It’s taken from the name of an American blues singer called Blind Willie McTell. It seemed sort of appropriate.”

He looked at us for a moment. “Well, on the strength of this project, I’m pleased to say that you’ll both be offered a place in the sixth form regardless of your end-of-term results. I’d be interested to know which subjects you’re likely to choose.”

He was looking at me first, so I told him that I wanted to study English, natural history, and geography, all of which he agreed were wise choices.

Ike was a little more reticent.

“Well, Ike. What about you?”

“Sir, I’m not planning to stay on for the sixth form,” he announced. “I’ll be leaving school at the end of term.”

The head looked a bit crestfallen when he heard that. “Given your poor academic record to date, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it would be a great pity if you don’t stay on. Besides, what on earth will you do instead?”

“Sir, I’ve got a job lined up a fishing tackle shop. I’ll really enjoy that and will have plenty of time to go fishing.”

The head looked shocked. “I have to say that based on this project, that’s a dreadful waste of your potential.”

Ike just grinned. “Sir, what would be a waste is to stay on at school to study a lot of subjects in which I have not the slightest interest. Besides, as you’ve told me many times before, I’m not very good at schoolwork.”

“Perhaps that’s because you’ve skipped school so often!” said the head pointedly. “Besides, surely your parents will be very disappointed if you refuse an opportunity like this?”

“No, sir, we’ve discussed my leaving school, and they agree that I should do something that interests me.”

“Well, it’s hardly a wise career choice, that’s all I can say,” blustered Mr. Baker. “I mean, what future is there in that?”

“I don’t know sir. But as I see it, following my heart is bit like casting to a fish you hope is there but which you can’t actually see. Sometimes it works out for the best, sometimes it doesn’t—but you have to give it a go.”

Of course, it was pointless them trying to convince Ike to stay on at school. Inevitably we lost contact when he left, and I’ll admit that I’ve always felt a tad guilty, as I’d only earned my place at sixth form on the back of his project. In doing so, I eventually got a good a job, but the long hours needed to pursue my career then family commitments all contrived to put paid to any chance I had to go fishing.

That was all a long time ago, and I’d almost forgotten about Ike and about Blind Willie’s Pool until it all came back to me while I was sitting here in my study at last contemplating my retirement. I’m holding my old rod in my hands for the first time in years, remembering the familiar feel of it. I know I should be planning a return to some of the rivers I used to fish as a boy, but all I can think of is that I’ve spent the best part of fifty years doing a job that I never really wanted to do in the first place! I don’t know where Ike is now, but I bet he isn’t thinking the same. In fact, I can almost picture him sitting beside a river somewhere, smiling as he eases yet another lively brown trout toward his net. I’m not sure which of us wasted their potential, but somehow, I don’t think it was him.

After a successful career as a chartered surveyor, Chris Bishop retired to concentrate on writing. His first five books are all set at the time of Alfred the Great and form the Shadow of the Raven series: Blood and Destiny, The Warrior with the Pierced Heart, The Final Reckoning, Bloodlines, and The Prodigal Son. His latest book, Oscar’s Tale, was published in 2023. Chris is an avid fly fisherman and is working on a series of short stories about fishing, samples of which can be found under the Incompleat Angler tab at www.chrisbishopauthor.com.