Into the deep

Beneath the crystal-clear, alien world of water lie the great piscean survivors of the Ice Age. The Lake District is a fish-spotter's paradise, reports John Lewis-Stempel

- John Lewis-Stempel

‘I wondered why it is that we’re all such bloody fools. Why don’t people, instead of the idiocies they do spend their time on, just walk round looking at things? That pool, for instance—all the stuff that’s in it… mystery of their lives, down there under water’ George Orwell, ‘Coming Up for Air’ (1939)

I CONFESS that this is a fishy story. I was driving to Crummock Water, one of the Lake District’s less tourist-mobbed destinations (if you want a tip, Thirlmere is another), but stopped on the north-east bank of Windermere for a breather. Parked the car near the village of Troutbeck, walked to the stony shore, admired the spirograph patterns of the raindrops on the gin-clear water, childishly stepped out along a row of black stones into the lake, looked down and there was an Arctic charr. The Ice Age fish. I am convinced of it. At first slanting glance, I thought ‘club-shape of trout’, but then the fish carouselled in the water: witch-mouthed; sinister streamlined corporeality; U-boat Type VII; gold pollocking belly catching coal fire as it fled.

Charr derives from the Gaelic name for blood, ceara/cera, referring to the fish’s red belly. Cold irony.