Advice from an experienced angler: From the practice of an angler-athlete. Tomashevsky V. E.

The book, designed for a wide range of sports fishing enthusiasts, contains a description of both well-known and purely local, "Irkutsk", methods of sport fishing, tested on the rich personal experience of the author and the collective achievements of fishermen in the region, gives practical advice on choosing the time, place and methods of fishing in the reservoirs of our region, and most importantly, it is a real textbook for both beginners and experienced anglers in the manufacture of artificial flies, worms, spinners, jig, etc. In this case, V. E. Tomashevsky reached the heights of skill, his products are known not only in our country, but also abroad.

Sports fishing.
The Irkutsk region is very rich in large and small rivers, lakes, man-made seas. This necklace of beautiful clear water is closed by our pearl - Baikal. The scope for amateur fishing is large, but not unlimited. With the development of construction, the growth of population, especially urban, with the availability of modern means of transportation, not only all nearby, but also previously inaccessible places began to be visited by man. From how he behaves in new places, a good or bad mark remains in nature. A true fisher-sportsman is the bearer of a careful, prudent attitude towards it, and not a consumer, knowing that after us many generations of people will be fond of fishing. Therefore, every member of the society of hunters and fishermen and just an honest person must himself observe all the rules of sport fishing and the laws of nature conservation and stop their violation by all sorts of grabbers and destroyers of the living.

A wide variety of fish inhabit our water bodies. Swift grayling, smooth, motley, like a mosaic, lenok, proud taimen, a torpedo of our beautiful waters - pike, red-finned robber perch, harmless roach, nimble dace, bully ruff, gloomy burbot, little-known valek and tagunok, a whole family of cyprinids, as well as a serious sturgeon, noble sterlet, heavy whitefish, calm cisco, bream and peled - with the efforts and cares of man, they master new habitats and successfully breed. In addition to the fish listed above, for the youngest generation of anglers, there are a lot of crucians, minnows, tenches, minnows and Angarsk mollusks. While not all types of fish allowed for amateur fishing, but what is allowed is enough to bring joy to any angler. With strict observance of the rules of sport fishing, fishing standards, effective assistance in the work of fish breeding and protection of fish stocks, the opportunity to spend free time with a fishing rod in hand on the river will not dry up, but, on the contrary, will increase.
Below, the author will try to tell in an accessible form about life, the habits of different fish species and methods of catching fish that are allowed to be caught with sports gear.

Grayling.
This fish is well known to all anglers living in Siberia. Grayling is easy to distinguish by a huge fin, colorful and bright, like a peacock's tail, a gray-green back and a silvery-white belly. The fin of an adult black male of the marsovik is so beautiful that foreign fishermen-tourists who come to Irkutsk cut it off from the caught fish, dry it in a straightened form and take it home as a souvenir, as a rare trophy.

Depending on the age and habitat, the variegation and brightness of the grayling color is different, but in all cases it is masking and it is very difficult to see fish in the water against the background of small pebbles and large stones, this strict, beautiful fish lives in all our rivers, but is located on one place is not permanent, but only at certain times of the year.
There are many varieties of grayling, differing from each other in appearance, lifestyle, size and other features. On Baikal and on the Angara, two varieties of large graylings are distinguished: white and black, whose weight reaches more than two kilograms, and the length is more than 50 centimeters. On Irkut, Kitoi, Belaya, Oka, the average weight of grayling does not exceed 350-400 grams. On the Lena, Kirenga and other rivers of the north-east of the region, the weight of an adult individual is often no more than 200 - 250 grams. Only on Ulkan, where there are a lot of graylings, specimens weighing up to 400 grams come across. According to the stories of local fishermen, graylings are found in the upper reaches of these rivers, which are not inferior in size to the Angara giants, but I have not been able to catch such ones there.

In spring or early summer, graylings rise to spawn from large rivers to taiga rivulets and streams.

The first to rise through the melt water, which is still on top of the ice, is a small light grayling, called the "glacier". The last to spawn is the largest and most beautiful black marsovik in its wedding attire. caviar graylings toss on rocky-pebbly soils with clean running water, with a small depth and speed of flow.

Now in the Irkutsk region there is an annual temporary ban on catching grayling in all rivers and channels flowing into Baikal, in the lake itself, in the Angara, Chuna, Uda, Lena, Nizhnyaya Tunguska and their tributaries, in the Irkutsk and Bratsk reservoirs. The ban lasts from April 20-25 to June 20-25.

With the beginning of leaf fall, graylings “roll down” - they descend from the upper reaches of rivers and rivers to calmer and deeper places, having worked up enough fat over the summer. In a warm, protracted autumn, they are in no hurry to leave their feeding places and linger on the stretches until frost, until sludge (sludge is ice formed at the bottom of the river, which breaks off and floats down the river with stones), with which they finally leave their summer and autumn "pastures".

The grayling feeds mainly on aquatic animals: caddisflies sitting on stones, amphipods, stoneflies, all kinds of insects falling into the water, and small fish do not shun. With such a variety of food, graylings are well-fed and lose weight only during spawning, but again quickly eat up, so it seems that they are fat at any time of the year.

During spawning, small fish eat its caviar, but the grayling itself does not remain in debt. Lounging around a lenok farm (a farm is an oval-shaped depression on a pebble bottom, prepared by lenoks for throwing caviar during spawning), he feasts on large lenkov caviar, for which he receives a good scolding from angry males. More than once I had to observe how angry males literally pushed annoying and impudent freeloaders from the garden, who immediately returned back as if nothing had happened.

The grayling sees very well and distinguishes the finest shades of flowers, but often does not believe his eyes and determines the food also by taste. Once I had the opportunity to verify this. In April, when the fishing ban had not yet come, my friend and I came to Lake Baikal on a Sunday. It was covered with strong ice, and one could safely walk on it. Along the ice edge near the mouth of the Pereemnaya River, already free of ice, we made several holes for ice fishing. The holes were four meters from the open water, and the bottom of Baikal on this bright sunny day was visible to the smallest detail. A small school of large graylings walked right under us. The current of the mountainous and noisy Pereemnaya reached them, but very weakened by the distance. River spring water brought various living creatures and vegetation to Baikal. Seeing any lump, one of the graylings, the one to which he swam closer, left the flock to meet him and took this lump in his mouth. If it was edible and corresponded to taste, then it was eaten, and if not, it was immediately spat out in the full sense of the word, and quite far away. There was no fuss or rudeness among the graylings. Each member of this flock, having chosen a floating object, swam out to meet it, calmly took it in his mouth, ate or spit it out, without fear of rivalry. It seemed that the graylings were not feeding, but were doing some serious work. (However, in other places, with insufficient food, graylings behave differently).

This suggests that they are able to take and spit out our baits and artificial lures, finding them dangerous if we are late to make a timely and quick hook. Apparently, they are hooked only when, having grabbed the bait, they rush to the bottom with a jerk and detect themselves.

Observing the behavior of graylings in the water column of Baikal, we believed that they were all large. Having equipped a drill oud, we soon pulled one of the walking “giants” out of the water and were disappointed: it turned out to be a small billhook (hook is a small grayling prohibited from catching according to existing fishing rules), which is not supposed to be caught, and uninteresting.

This is how we first got acquainted with an optical illusion on Baikal, when objects under the ice, illuminated from the side, seem much larger than they really are.

Grayling lives in small flocks, large specimens stay more alone. He chooses places for feeding and resting in accordance with the conditions of the river, but he always prefers open, shallow reaches with a pebbly bottom between rapids and rifts, where he occupies holes near some shelters. From the depths, he vigilantly monitors the events taking place