Winter Ladoga. Ladoga lake. Proven fishing spots

For active recreation and fishing on Ladoga to be successful, you need to understand the characteristics of the place and know about the seasonal behavior of fish. You can get the information you need by reading this article.

• Features of Lake Ladoga
• Exciting fishing: what kind of fish is caught on Ladoga
• Fishing on Ladoga in summer
• Winter fishing on Ladoga
• Fishing on Ladoga in autumn and spring
• When and where is the best time to go fishing on Ladoga

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Features of Lake Ladoga

Few people know that the amazing Lake Ladoga - the largest in Western Europe - gives “life” to just one river, the Neva. But many sources flow into it. It is not for nothing that most local residents and guests of the region combine their holiday there with fishing on Ladoga in winter and summer. Here is where:

• Take up bottom fishing.
• Go fishing from a boat.
• Hunt underwater.
• Throw gear from the shore.
• Fish from the ice.

The bottom topography of Lake Ladoga is very heterogeneous. In the north, where the depth reaches 220 meters, it is cut by sharp changes in elevation. But closer to the south, the “terrain” levels out, and the distance from the surface to the bottom ranges from 15 to 70 meters. The depth reaches its maximum at a point near the Valaam archipelago - 233 meters.

Map of the depths of Lake Ladoga. It is used to plan fishing spots

In the waters of the lake there are about 500 islands of various sizes. And each of them can result in successful fishing. The cold in these places, as throughout Karelia, comes early: already in the middle (sometimes at the end) of October the reservoir freezes. Winter fishing on Ladoga ends in April - the ice begins to lose its position, first in the center, and then closer to the shores. But it should be noted that the central part of Ladoga freezes only when the thermometers are very negative.

Ladoga freezes to a depth of 70-90 cm in the most severe frosts

As for the weather, fishermen should be aware that complete calm can give way to a storm in the blink of an eye. To avoid falling into the “trap”, check the hydrometeorological center reports before going to the lake.

Exciting fishing on Ladoga: what kind of fish are caught

Did you know that the water of Lake Ladoga contains almost 100% oxygen dissolved in it? That is why year-round active recreation in this region is possible. There is no winter lull here. A fishing trip in any season can end with a good catch.

Experienced “hunters” can count on catching rare and elite fish species, including:

• Palia.
• Baltic sturgeon.
• Sterlet.
• Trout.
• Salmon.

Beginners can catch roach, raw fish, and ide. In addition to “simple” fish, Ladoga is home to grayling, and in winter, fans go for smelt, a very delicate, tasty fish.

Frost does not scare lovers of winter fishing for delicious smelt

The main commercial fish is pike perch. Its favorite habitat is shallows overgrown with bushes and algae in the southern part of Ladoga.

In the south there are bream and white bream. Almost anywhere in Lake Ladoga you can catch vendace and its larger brother, ripus. Whitefish is presented in two of its “incarnations” – lake and river species.

Sometimes, as a gift of fate, you come across a catfish. Fishing for catfish is a special pleasure. Experienced fishermen know not only its favorite habitats, but also various methods of bait. Usually, for such a unique “vacation” on Ladoga, one prepares in advance, two to three weeks in advance, choosing gear, lures and bait. And then the result is not long in coming.

Good preparation for catfish fishing guarantees amazing results!

Avid fishermen sometimes search for the best spots.

Fishing on Ladoga in summer

Ladoga is full of surprises and fishing in summer has its advantages. White nights allow you to spend more than just the day on the water. At night, but in daylight, it is interesting to catch pike perch. For this purpose, spinning rods with wobblers of different depths are used, since it is very active. His favorite places are rocky. Here the pike perch comes 3-10 km from the shore. Fishing is done from a boat.

Fishing from a boat is always more effective than from the shore

No less interesting and exciting is perch hunting. When it gets warm, it begins to feed on the fry, and its habitats are marked with many splashes. If you find a school of perch, successful fishing will be guaranteed. They use spinning rods, or trolling for large fish.

Winter fishing on Ladoga

Fishing on Ladoga in winter is very specific and dangerous. Stormy winds are common on the lake this season. This means that there is a high probability of solder failure. Even huge massive ice floes turn into small crumbs. Therefore, you need to be very careful when going fishing.

The central part of Ladoga rarely freezes. Strong and thick ice forms at a distance of up to 15 km from the coast.

Before going fishing, check the hydrometeorological center report, even if there is not a single cloud in the sky

Further towards the center it can be thin and fragile. If you fish close to shore, the catch can be quite good. But if you have a snowmobile, the likelihood of catching a large slave is higher. Pike is caught in shallow water, in thickets along the shore. Among fishermen, fishing for perch using a vertical spoon is considered the most exciting. Even for roach, winter fishing on Ladoga can be exciting: amateur video confirms this fact.

Fishing on Ladoga in autumn and spring

Fishing on Ladoga in autumn and spring for fishermen is an opportunity to use a float rod to catch roach, silver bream and bream. In spring, fish go to spawn and are caught among floating melting ice floes, in shallow thickets. Fishing for hungry pike is especially exciting. And autumn pike is the dream of any fisherman, because during this season the fish becomes especially fatty. In spring, the predator most often spawns in the reeds of the southern part of the lake.

When and where is the best time to go fishing on Ladoga

There is no single recipe for those who want to know when it is better to go fishing on Ladoga: in summer or winter. Fishing on Ladoga, where places have been “fed” for a long time, can be very successful in any season. Each season is good in its own way, and gives fishermen strong emotions and the opportunity to show the best qualities of a miner.

Come to Ladoga! Amazing discoveries and good fishing await you here!

To try your luck, you don’t have to go fishing in Ladoga in full gear. For debutant fishermen, a trip with Sharm Travel to relax on the shore is perfect. Try it! And, if fortune smiles on you, and you can catch a dozen or two perches or roaches without much effort, then all paths are open to you. Choose any tour whose program includes accommodation in houses and in the most picturesque and comfortable hotels. If you have any questions, call and our managers will recommend you the best places for fishing on Ladoga.

Lake Ladoga is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Europe. It is located in the northwestern part of Russia. The Karelian (northern) shore of the lake lies on the Baltic crystalline shield, it is steep and rocky. The southern coast, located in the Leningrad region, consists of sedimentary rocks. The coast gently goes under water, forming sandbanks and beaches. The lake was formed over several millennia by the melting of the glacier. This can explain the topography of the Ladoga bottom and its depths.

Photos and text Fedor Lashkov

Islands are “scattered” across Ladoga, there are more than 660 of them. In the north of the lake there are the Ladoga skerries, like a necklace of a series of rocky islands separated by narrow straits.
For me, the uniqueness of Lake Ladoga lies in the scale of its wild nature. A scattering of islands, snakes of straits and bays, lakes of different sizes inside the islands, rocky hills, shores blown by fierce winds from open waters - all this is for me an unexplored region, full of discoveries.

In the winter of 2016, I discovered winter Ladoga, especially artistic, unusual, new. It turned out that it was not filmed much at this time of year. My first winter works were filmed in frosts down to -30, ice covered bays and bays, unfrozen water smoked, and frost covered the trees. It was difficult: very cold, dangerous to walk on young ice, difficult in deep snow. But the beauty and unusualness of what I saw inspired me! More than once or twice I returned to this harsh Ladoga beauty.

Winter Ladoga is rich in a variety of landscapes: these are ascetic views, with stone shores covered with ice and snow, with a gray sky and lonely pine trees, and huge rock masses with sharp protrusions and littered with windbreaks, on top of which majestic pine trees rise, and powerful waves covering , like ice floes cut out with an ax, on sandy and stone shores, and the bottomless northern sky, through the thick clouds of which the rays of the cold sun break through, and granite bowls of mirror lakes.

And at dawn, the sky blooms from the rising sun, coloring both the snow and the dark spots of the unfrozen Ladoga waters with its radiance, and this is how the colorful poetry of these places is born. I usually try to meet dawns and dawns in an already proven place, studied in advance, arranging the compositions of my works so that the color of the sky, the rising sun, reflection in the water and on ice floes, glare, spots of light and shadows, all this adds up into one whole - in landscape canvas. And it is on the winter skerries of Ladoga that a great variety of compositions created by nature, stories of color and light opens up before me. All this is changing rapidly, every minute it is illuminated by the sun, then it subsides, then it is illuminated again, but softly, when the sun is covered by clouds and clouds.

At these moments you are filled with inspiration, energy, the desire to do everything and not miss anything. Catch the moment when the golden light of the setting sun covers the slope of the island, where pine trees in a fluffy robe froze under the emerging silver moon. And I rush there, practically running.

You have to wear a mask to protect your face. 30 degree frost and almost 100% dampness remind you that you can get hypothermic. A constant icy wind from open Ladoga, gusts of which sometimes reach up to 14 meters per second, blows through. To protect myself, I carefully choose clothing and footwear suitable for long walks in the cold. With experience, I realized how important it is to take spare things and be sure to have a change of clothes. By the way, I have different hats in my backpack: windproof, protecting from strong winds, very warm - for parking, and a lighter one, which I wear while shooting.

When moving quickly through the winter skerries, it is important to remember the danger of large polynyas near the islands; their depth sometimes reaches from 2 to 11 meters. Water in such places freezes last, this is due to its constant movement. Polynyas can be: open; covered with a light snow crust; covered with precarious thin ice. Often such areas are almost invisible. In a hurry, there is a great danger of falling into such a hole and going under water. I had a case when I plunged into this with photographic equipment.

You have to climb onto the steep side of the island, covered with a crust of ice, from a running start, grabbing the icy ledges with your hands.

When I first climbed the island, which is only 2 meters high, it took me 25 minutes, then I wanted to capture the foreground - the textured snow cover, with the patterns and lines left by the wind.

With experience comes skill. Having climbed onto the island, I move on my knees further from the edge of the cliff and in a hurry go to the shooting point. You have to check the depth of the snow with a trekking pole. This way you can protect yourself from invisible cracks in the thickness of the island, they are different: you can fall chest-deep, but it’s more dangerous to fall knee-deep during fast movement - it’s easy to dislocate or break your legs. I had already been here earlier in the day and spotted the most interesting areas of the bays, islands, and unusually shaped pine trees that suited the composition. It is easier to notice this with a fresh look without haste in calm, cloudy weather, then the attention is not distracted by the brightness of the colors, and you can thoughtfully look for compositions and stories that will be interesting for an outside viewer in the photograph to look at and travel with your eyes across the frame.

As a reward for my efforts, nature gives me a Ladoga winter fairy tale.

If you are lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, after severe frosts, you can see amazing ice sculptures.

At the border of ice and unfrozen waters of Ladoga, when the wind drives strong waves and splashes of water fall on the edges of stone shores, coastal blocks and even on tree branches, bizarre swells form and freeze in the cold. Such scenes are interesting, but very difficult to photograph. To capture this beauty in the frame, you need to be opposite the island, where the water is. In such difficult cases, I go down to the foot of the island. As a rule, there are small stone “cornices” with a width of 90 to 200 cm, which sharply go down under the water. In cold weather, ice forms on them, and despite the fact that the restless waters of Ladoga constantly erode the ice, the cornices are quite slippery. Having descended, I find the widest ledge and move away from the picturesque coastal cliff as far as possible - I have to go into the water about knee-deep to the very edge of the ledge, my waterproof winter boots allow me to do this. Of course, this is a very short distance for shooting, only 2 meters. An icy rocky shore hangs overhead and a rocky cornice at your feet. I would like to film this in one shot, but there is no physical opportunity to do this. Even using a 17mm lens, I can only capture certain parts of the landscape: either the ice, or the bottom of a cliff, or the snow-covered trees at the top of the island. Then I turn to my favorite shooting style - two- and three-tier panoramas. The first tier covers only the bottom: rock-cornice, water, waves, reflection in the water. It takes from 5 to 12 frames, it all depends on the intended plot. The second tier, making up the same number of frames: up and what is in front of me is a picturesque ice wall-rock.

As usual, I shoot in such a way as to capture the entire island. I crop compositions that are too elongated when processing panoramas, or leave the entire island to show the scale. This is a difficult shooting style. Using Photoshop, all the frames will need to be assembled into a single canvas. Without experience, you will have to tinker. In addition, if mistakes are made during shooting, it will be impossible to assemble a panorama in Photoshop. Thanks to five years of shooting in this style, I have learned to take into account all the nuances, but from time to time mistakes happen to me, especially in a hurry and difficult conditions. Therefore, I recommend to my students to always make spare takes.

The panoramic style of shooting has always attracted me precisely because of its ability to capture a large space surrounding me. The effect is created as if you are seeing the entire landscape from the side, revealing a scale that cannot be fit into one frame. It seems to me that the panorama of the area that opens up to the viewer in such works allows one to “wander with one’s eyes”; it turns out to be a kind of mini-trip.

Of course, with such shooting, side effects cannot be avoided, such as: distortion of the foreground, when when unfolding a straight bank, a bend is obtained; “the effect of two suns” (the most popular viewer comment, in my experience), when the sun, for example, is located in the frame on the left, and the sunlit side of the island is on the right. In my opinion, there are cases when these moments are justified - the landscape looks like a solid canvas, when cropped, the elegance and grace of the composition are lost and disappear.

There are many difficulties in filming on winter Ladoga, most of them require experience, caution and concentration. For those who have never been to Ladoga in winter, and even more so for those who have never been to Ladoga at all, I recommend going there only with an experienced guide. There are more and more cases when photographers who have no experience in winter hiking come to me to find out the coordinates of the places where I photographed and go there on their own. I do not give clear coordinates and do not recommend going on a search alone. My routes can be quite difficult.

Hiking in winter Ladoga always involves danger to health and life!

» Winter fishing on Ladoga, winter fishing on Lake Ladoga

Lake Ladoga, or as it is called, Ladoga, has a number of features for winter fishing.

Ladoga is a fresh water lake in the North-West of Russia. Winter fishing on Ladoga is very unique. The following properties of this reservoir must be taken into account:

1. The reservoir, whose area is more than eighteen thousand square kilometers, and whose average depth is forty-seven meters (!), does not warm up completely even in the summer (maximum twenty to twenty-five meters).
2. A characteristic feature of this lake is a complete replacement of water approximately every two years. This update of Ladoga helps to improve the oxygen regime, even during periods wilderness . So the fish are active almost all year round. What is necessary consider during winter fishing.
3. Towards the middle of winter, the fish move closer to depths of about six to ten meters.
4. Lake Ladoga is very specific in the composition of its water, which contains a minimal amount of impurities and is almost close to distilled water, since there is very little aquatic vegetation in Ladoga. There are very few nutrients in such water.
5. The most “populated” is considered south – the eastern and southern part of Lake Ladoga, more than fifty species of fish are waiting for their fishermen!.
6. Lake Ladoga covers with ice rather slowly and freezes completely only in the middle of winter.
7. The weather on Ladoga is very unstable. Changes in temperature, wind strength and direction, and pressure can change several times a day.

For residents of St. Petersburg, the most suitable fishing places are the Kokkorevo platform “44th km”, Lavrovo-Nizhnyaya Shaldikha-Nazia, Chernoe and Lednevo.

For residents of the East of the Leningrad region these are: Krenitsy, Dubno, Voronovo, Kirikovo and Storozhno.

When fishing on Lake Ladoga, you don’t need to invent any new gear or fishing methods. When the bite is active, the fish will bite on almost everything. When winter fishing on Ladoga, various white fish (bream, roach) are often caught in by-catch (even on a spoon or a balancer). The entry of bream into the village a couple of years ago was typical. Black, when he took and turned purple on all types of tackle and did not fit into the holes!

Due to the high pressure in the winter waters of Lake Ladoga, fishing comes down to searching for active fish, which is greatly facilitated when there are large crowds of people. It’s worth taking binoculars with you and looking at the fishermen waving their hands - that’s what searching for fish is all about. Fishing in a “crowd” in winter is very effective, but short-lived, since a large crowd of people scares the fish and the school moves, but it’s still easier to find it with such a bunch of people than alone.

It also happens the other way around, you find a fish and they “drill” you, but this, by the way, is typical only for Ladoga in winter; on Rybinka, for example, this is not the case.

Almost never does an angler leave without a catch when fishing on Lake Ladoga in winter.

In conclusion, watch a short video: “Winter fishing on Ladoga”

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• Ladoga fishing 2018

Two days on December 11-13 on Ladoga through the Krenitsa base. There were a lot of things that went wrong in this fishing trip, but on the thirteenth of December everything settled down, and I got great pleasure from the active bite. I had to look for a partner through the PKR forum. Found it: we agreed on Sunday evening, Monday and Tuesday. We arrived in Krenitsy at 18:00 - complete darkness.

The already rebuilt café building and the street lights glowed very beautifully.

The base has so far carried fishermen only on hovercraft. For 8 fishermen, a trip for 4800 rubles is not expensive, but we were not ready. The administration had not yet risked transporting snowmobiles, so my friend and I rented a Finnish sleigh with ski runners.

First, we planned to go on a night reconnaissance trip through Volkhovets to Ladoga, five kilometers away. After two kilometers, my partner got very upset and refused to go further. The navigator showed that we had 350 meters left to the depths. I tried to drill into the place where we stood. The ice was at least 20 cm thick, but... there was only 30 cm of water.

In past years, I successfully caught pike and burbot at such depths. I began to set up the girder, but my partner changed his mind about going further and, despite my opinion, drove to the Base. I also had to run away and catch up with him: at night you can’t walk alone on the ice of Ladoga. We returned to Base at 21:00.

Arriving at the Base, the partner found out from the watchman that a couple of days ago someone had caught 12 kg of pike 4 km away (behind the village of Krenitsy). He decided to go there to fish. I decided to stay, go fishing and scout out the situation near the Base. At 4 o'clock in the morning on December 12, "Carlson flew away", promising to return by 21 o'clock. We agreed to go home on the 13th after lunch.

On the 12th I slept well, had a hearty lunch and, having told the base workers where I was going, moved along Volkhovets to Volkhov. The river is completely covered with ice and snow.

On the ice of Volkhovets and Volkhov, in the area of ​​their confluence, there was a chain of mines.

Two guys took the mesh out of them and shook out the caught live bait into a bucket. I met them. Artyom earns money catching live bait and he invited me to become his client: by phone 8-950-008-77-13order the freshest local live bait from St. Petersburg for your arrival in Krenitsy. I agreed.

The guys told me that on Volkhov they caught roach that was too large to be used as live bait, and they stopped setting up gear there. I walked 300-400 meters along Volkhov and stopped to fish on one of their lanes.

Crosses indicate a chain of lanes. Having felt the edges of the lane I liked, I made a hole at its edge. The ice on the Volkhov 5-10 meters from the reeds was more than 10 cm. The ice in the lane was 2 cm, the depth under it was 70-90 cm. I fed it with RYBACHELLA “Winter Universal” bait. It started pecking after about 10 minutes. First, I took “cat’s joy” - 20 grams of silver bream. Gradually the size of the fish began to grow. After half an hour, silver breams and occasionally breams measuring 150 grams began to be taken at intervals of 1-2 minutes. They took it for everything, but best of all for maggots. Then I came across a 300 gram bream, and then... I couldn’t pull it out: the 0.12 mm thick fluorocarbon leash couldn’t stand it.

I tied a new leash with two jigs. I make these leashes at home in the warmth in advance. I baited the fishing rod and lowered it into the hole. I wanted to “pee” and walked three meters away from the hole. As soon as I “peeed” I saw that my fishing rod was jumping towards the hole. I foolishly rushed after her, slipped and drove “at the stern” into the lane. The 2 cm ice easily let me into the water and I (for real) wet myself again right up to my armpits!

There will be no more new photographs until I buy a new camera - it “drank too much” of the Volkhov water and did not survive. I jumped out of the lane like a candle. I wonder how long is left until Christmas? CAN'T I PROTECT THIS AS A CHRISTMAS FONT?

On the ice, I immediately remembered the instructions: not to cool down, but to rush to housing. I jumped on the Finnish sled and very quickly rushed towards the Krenitz campers. I left all my fishing equipment at the lane: every second cooled me down. The warm and cozy camper at Base Krenica was only 800 meters away. The water that got into my boots and under my clothes quickly warmed up from the heat of my body. Adrenaline apparently helped a lot. It was worse with my hands: wet thread work gloves perfectly passed the cold (-8-10C). Your hands are stiff!

In the camper, the first thing I did was take off my gloves. Then he poured 50 grams of cognac, cut off some homemade ham, drank it and had a bite. I don’t like drinking alone, but I had to. IT GOES WELL! And only after that he began to undress. I squeezed the clothes out the door and hung them from the ceiling of the camper. To make it hotter, I also lit a gas burner. After cooking lunch, I ate and lay down under the blanket.

Suddenly the phone rings: Artyom (a live bait fisherman) with a trembling voice asks if I’m alive. He saw the open mine and my gear in it, well, he became worried: had something bad happened... “How did you fly into our mine?” I reassured: “It’s the fool’s own fault - he got carried away! Your mines are clearly visible from the piles of excavated ice.”

Then his partner called: the pike weren’t biting and he decided to go home at two in the morning. I called my nephew, explained the situation and asked him to come pick me up the next evening after work: “I want to go fishing tomorrow.” Oleg graciously agreed.

At 21:00 my partner rushed in: “It’s not biting. Get ready, let’s go home!” I explained that I couldn’t travel in wet clothes and that they would take me out the next day. He says: “Well, look, I didn’t leave you, I called you, but you refused.” I got ready and drove off.

Every half an hour I wrung out the synthetic padding pants and jacket so that they would dry faster. I slept well, had breakfast and on the morning of December 13th in almost dry clothes I went to the ice. My equipment was intact, but the fish... From the tracks it turned out that I had made a couple of foxes happy.This made me happy: I did something good for the cuties, they are hungry now.

I settled down to fish in the same lane. She pecked the silver bream conscientiously. There were again two gear breaks. I strained with great pleasure. Artyom came to me again to ask: “How are you?”

Employees of the Krenitsa Base went on two snowmobiles for reconnaissance along the shore of Ladoga up to 9 km. Usually they catch perch there. Probably any day now the Base will begin transporting fishermen with snowmobiles.

In the evening Oleg (Orimyaki) came to pick me up and took me home safely.

This was the adventure-filled trip I had this time.

la

It's winter again in St. Petersburg, which means it's time to go ice fishing. Where to go is not a question - as has happened over the past few years, on the first ice I go to Ladoga, to Black Satama Bay. They've been catching perch there for several days now with varying success. During this time, thousands of fishermen visited this place, and given that there is not much ice yet, the fish in the water area were knocked out. However, there is always hope of not being the last one at this celebration of life :).

It so happened that the last time I was on Ladoga this year was last winter - back in February. It was impossible to get out for fishing in open water in the summer and autumn. Moreover, I was looking forward to a new meeting with Ladoga. I love fishing there :). We left early, despite it being a weekday, quite a lot of people were expected, which means there may be problems with parking in the village of Chernoye. You didn't make a mistake :).

My old comrades, Maxim Perov and Artem (Pocker), kept me company at the opening of the hard water season. While we were getting ready, more familiar fishermen arrived. Artyom went with them to the coastal cane to catch pike with girders, and Maxim and I went into the bright distance to look for perch. We bounced a little further from the coastal zone. There aren't many people here. The ice is not thick, about 8-10 cm, the top layer is frozen snow. In some places it is difficult to move because of the water under the snow.

Maxim begins searching for fish with his favorite reelless tackle, while I equip one fishing rod with a spinner, the other with a balancer. The weather is pleasant, cloudy, no wind, in general, very conducive to a pleasant pastime :). The first hour is silence, we often shift, I get a couple of pokes on my balance in one hole, I tried this section, to no avail. An elderly fisherman passes by and we chat a little. He fishes with a jig, and at the very beginning of fishing he took a near-kill whitefish and showed it to me, a beautiful fish!

Meanwhile, time passes, there are no bites, we rush around the water area with Maxim, and all to no avail. A crowd has formed on the shore, it looks like they are dragging someone down. This crowd does not attract us, we are still looking for what is called our fish. The wind picked up, Max also switched to fishing with a balance spoon. At some point, another cluster of fishermen began to form very nearby.

In general, fishing in a crowd, although quite specific, can be quite successful in terms of fish. Of course, it’s not comfortable to fish there; the question is who needs what from fishing. I have one friend who quite calmly and purposefully fits into this crowd. And he even experiences a kind of excitement. Like a chess grandmaster, he analyzes where to make his next move, to move the horse, in the sense of sticking a new hole, so that he would sit right on the fish’s head. And in addition to enjoy the fact that he is much more successful at fishing than those around him :)

It seems to me that the fishermen in such a crowd are not even completely “assholes”. After all, they understand perfectly well that if they drill a hole just a couple of meters from the fisherman, they themselves, in turn, will be drilled by the next fishermen. That is, they accept this situation as completely natural. The situation is much worse with another category of assistants. This is when jigs rush into a small concentration of spinners. The latter, as a rule, even after finding a perch, try to maintain the correct distance between each other, drilling no closer than 15-20 to each other. And then, suddenly, several “bump shakers” land in this gap at once, and with their actions, quite often, they simply cut off the bite. By the way, this happened on this fishing trip too.

One moment was completely surprising, but, however, quite typical for classic “assholes.” I bounce into a free space, far beyond the edge of a small cluster of fishermen, and just throw the spoon into a fresh hole, when a sweet couple immediately appears. One is drilling about five meters from me, the other is about three meters away. Moreover, he uses an electric drill for 5-centimeter ice, making two holes at once. Apparently, to catch perch with both hands at once, in Macedonian style :). Someone will explain to me, it’s crazy all around the place, I didn’t even catch anything here. And here it is. FOR WHAT???

And also, watching a large crowd, one inevitably remembers a description made at the beginning of the 20th century, i.e. a hundred years ago: “Like a flock of seagulls or monkeys, fish fly from one place to another, and each of them drills hole after hole, hoping that the bite will be better in the new place.” This is about the current opinion that the “Ladoga asshole” is an exclusively local and very recent phenomenon :)

This was a small digression, let's get back to fishing :). Of course, I jumped away from the crowd, joining the group of sparklers. Time for a quiet lunch. In the meantime, the sun came out, I haven’t seen it for a long time.

Somewhere around one o'clock in the afternoon I finally get the first bites and here are the first, medium-sized bass, on the ice. The bites on the balancer are frequent, but today I’m having a really bad time with the execution. I should have switched to a small spoon, but I was too lazy. At the end of the fishing trip, it turned out that several acquaintances fishing with homemade fish in the size of 35-40 mm were caught much more successfully than me. I spent the rest of my fishing in the same area. The ice there was relatively new and much thinner - 5 cm, the snow layers were without water. I didn’t catch much, but, most importantly, TYNTS!s were present :)

They didn’t resist until the last minute; they wanted to get to the shore before dark. Again, we've come so far. After fishing, Maxim calculated on the navigator, we ran about ten kilometers that day. And all for the sake of a few tails. So, after all, is there happiness in the number of fish?! :)

When we returned, there was still a crowd near the shore. At the parking lot we learned that in the evening a larger fish hatched there, up to 350 grams, although there were also enough small things from 50 grams. And Artem was already waiting for us at the car. He also caught his fish.

I returned home tired but happy. It's starting to thaw now and there will be some rain. Most likely, in the coming days the ice will erode and access to it will be dangerous. But we in St. Petersburg are no strangers to such weather. We will look forward to the second first ice :)

And, as usual, a photo of the final stage of fishing :)