Gone Fishing

AKHTUBA AND LYUBA

It is hard to pinpoint exactly where the Volga Delta begins, but just past Volgograd (the city formerly known as Stalingrad), the landscape along the banks of Europe’s largest river system changes radically. Deciduous and coniferous forests suddenly give way to wide-open spaces and southern sultriness, and the typical gray rooftops you see throughout the rest of Russia take on an orangish tint.

It is at this point you realize you’re in the steppe.

Soon sand dunes and desert appear, along with the occasional storm, which is what gives those roofs their orange color. Surprisingly, the deeper you go into this baking, seemingly lifeless steppe, the closer you come to a region of Russia that is among its richest in water, flora, and fauna.

By the time you leave Volgograd Oblast and enter Astrakhan Oblast, it becomes pretty clear what this place is about. You begin to see stores with names like “Everything for Fishing,” ads for rods, nets, and inflatable dinghies, and roadside kiosks stocked with mountains of dried and smoked fish. But hard-core anglers are too eager for their own catch to stop. From the highway, you begin to catch glimpses of the Akhtuba, a left distributary of the Volga known to offer some of the best fishing in Russia.

Russian fishing aficionados can be divided into two groups: those who can say “I fished the Akhtuba” and those who dream of doing so. Members of the first category regale those in the second with endless tall tales of swarms of fish, of catfish and carp of unbelievable size. Tall as these tales may sound, for the most part they are gospel truth.

I remember the wild spot from which I first started fishing the Akhtuba, just a couple hours drive from Volgograd. My six-year-old son, who was holding a spinning rod for the first time in his life, suddenly hooked a glistening, silver-winged ziege (chukhon in Russian, Pelecus cultratus in binomial nomenclature, also known as a sichel or saber carp), and a few minutes later, his first northern pike (shchuka or Esox lucius). Literally every second or third cast brought in a hefty fish. Pretty soon, we realized we had nowhere to put them and sat down right there in the grass to enjoy some lunch. As my son was enjoying his Volga fish-soup First Communion, some movement caught my eye. A large steppe viper was writhing right between us as we sat cross-legged on the ground!

“Steady now, we seem to be having lunch with a snake. Let’s just not move,” I said, hurriedly trying to suppress the panic it’s easy to succumb to in such situations.

Within the very first minutes of our acquaintance, the Akhtuba had lavished fish on us but also given us a helpful reminder that this generosity comes coupled with danger, and snakes are not the only worry. The vipers may travel in gangs (“generations”), but if you leave them alone and are careful not to step on them, you can coexist with no problem. The real hazards reside in the water itself. Huge turbid cavities in the riverbed known as pits (yamy) disrupt the current and cause whirlpools. Furthermore, the ferocious steppe winds can barrel down the river like a tunnel and sweep away backpacks, tents, and boats, along with whatever they were tied to.

One type of wind that blows through the region has its own name – the Sukhovey (which roughly translates as dry blow). As the name suggests, it is a low-humidity hot wind that can persist for days, desiccating crops.

In 1947, the desert landscape to the east of the Akhtuba inspired Soviet leaders to place a ballistic and surface-to-air missile test site here, outside the ancient village of Kapustin Yar. The site equipped itself with military hardware taken from defeated Germany. Later, Kapustin Yar was developed into a launch facility for satellites and sounding rockets. Public records indicate that eleven nuclear explosions were conducted here, starting in the 1950s. Fortunately, the testing grounds do not border directly on the delta. It is the Kazakhs living near the Russian border who bear the brunt of the facility’s activities.

The springtime release of water from the overfilled Volga reservoirs (much farther upstream) causes the Akhtuba and the delta’s other distributaries to swell. This rise can be so sudden that anglers who had driven across a dry field in search of a good fishing spot find their return path blocked by an impassable channel that was not there just an hour before. They have to find a new path, winding their way through a network of yeriki (the term used for the spiderweb of channels that make up the delta). The delta has more than eight hundred major channels.

Toward noon we stop in the village of Novonikolayevka, whose edges are lapped by the swollen Akhtuba. Everywhere I look there are bands of children running up to their knees in water. They seem to be collecting something. I approach to have a look: they are holding amphibious turtles! During the mating season, the reptiles swarm the shoals, and the children have a fine time catching them. One young lady, Lyuba, wears a broad smile. I ask whether she is at all afraid of the river by whose banks she’s spent her childhood.

“Yes, we’re afraid of it, because the current is very strong. But we’re not scared of the snakes, we’re used to them. But I’m still a little scared of the horses. Our horse recently reared up and almost threw me.”

“And where would you like to travel?” I inquired of the freckle-faced beauty who admitted that the only large city she’d been to was Volgograd.

“To Moscow, to London, to Paris. I’d like to see the Eiffel Tower...”

Lyuba was just getting ready to let the turtle go back into the water when she saw a group of boys racing toward her on bicycles. As we part, she confides that she’d like to be an actress.

As the sun sets, some local adults approach the slope leading up to Novonikolayevka. They are walking down the river channels using pitchforks and spikes to spear carp and pike, swarms of which can be seen in the crystal-clear water. The hunt doesn’t stop with nightfall, but now the fishermen wear headlamps. In these parts, this sort of fishing isn’t against the rules. In any event, I notice that the locals limit themselves to a small number of fish. It doesn’t take long before they have a nice meal for the family.

DELTA LABYRINTHS

Our journey to the Lower Delta now takes us through Astrakhan, which may be Russia’s most culturally diverse city. As a crossroads for Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, this Caspian Sea port has been a melting pot since antiquity. We now see water wherever we look – small lakes, streams, and navigation channels, including the Bakhtemir, a major distributary of the lower Volga.

A few hours later, the landscape again becomes drier, the greenery becomes sparser, and sandy spots become increasingly prevalent. We can see camels on the horizon, and large birds of prey soar overhead as signs of human habitation become rare.

At a rural intersection, we are surprised to see an exotic building – a Buddhist chapel. We are now in Kalmykia, the only Buddhist republic in Europe. A good part of Kalmykia lies within the Volga Delta, but here it isn’t easy to reach the water. There are kilometers of dust, sand, dry wind. We spend hours naively looking for the river bank. Horses are silhouetted on the horizon. In Kalmykia they graze the steppe freely, spending days at a time wandering the plains searching for edible greenery.

Meanwhile, the map on my smartphone is telling me that we’re driving along the floor of the Caspian Sea. Out our car windows we see a wall of reeds. In May, their stalks stand about two meters high, but in the autumn, they can reach six or seven! There’s water lapping the reeds, but it’s unclear whether it’s river water or sea water. Only a narrow embankment juts from the water to provide us a path forward.

As darkness falls, I drive along this strip of land, confident that any road would end in a field where we’ll be able to pitch our tent. But my headlights show the embankment growing increasingly narrow, and the scraping of reeds against our car becomes louder and louder. We feel our tires starting to slip, first down one side of the road and then another. I get out for a better look. By the light of the moon I see that what I had assumed were tire tracks from a car were actually the track of a motorcycle with a sidecar. The bank is surrounded by a sea of water with a thick forest of reeds. Walking ahead in the hope of finding somewhere to turn around – a hundred meters, two hundred, a kilometer – I see nothing but an ever-narrowing path. We decide to unload everything out of the car to reduce its weight. Under the buzzing of mosquitoes, we try to sleep in the car. I am plagued by nightmares that our car is slowly slipping into the sea.

LEECH HUNTERS

As soon as I wake up, I send my quadcopter drone into the already sunny sky to get a sense of my surroundings. My screen shows nothing but reeds and water for kilometers around – no signs of human habitation, no people or vehicles. There was no hope of anyone coming to our rescue: even if there had been someone nearby with a vehicle big enough to tow us out of our fix, why would they agree to doom it on our behalf? Despite the hot weather, that thought sent a chill down my spine. We were in a tight spot. But there’s always some way out. Even from Europe’s largest delta.

I throw the car into reverse and drive at the lowest speed I can manage. My eyes are glued to the central rearview mirror (the side mirrors are obscured by reeds). My dear traveling companion follows, keeping her eye on the wheels so she can warn me if they slip out of the tire tracks, even by a centimeter. It takes several hours to go a few hundred meters. When we finally reach an intersection with another embankment, I climb out from behind the wheel, relieved and exhausted. Suddenly, two Kalmyks appear out of nowhere, gawking at us as if we were from another planet.

“No one ever drives cars down that road,” they inform me.

I gawk back at them equally confused. They’ve got inflated inner tubes over their shoulders.

“We’re leech hunting,” they explain, in answer to my puzzled look.

But why the inner tubes, I wonder? Instead of pestering them with questions, I decide to follow along and observe the process.

One of the suntanned men drops the fully inflated inner tube into the water and starts hitting it with a stick. The other keeps his eyes fixed on the glassy water.

“The leeches can’t see anything, but they react to vibration,” Anatoly (the more talkative of the two) explains. His companion, meanwhile, grabs the first leech that shimmies across the water’s surface, deftly tossing it into a cloth glove. I manage to get a good look at the next one: it is large and glistening, with a rainbow sheen.

Up to seven leeches can be used in leech therapy, a popular treatment in Russia for everything from migraines to varicose veins.

“We sell them to dealers at 50 rubles each [approximately 80 cents]. They take them to pharmacies, where they’re sold for 200 or even 300,” the leech hunter informs me, clearly disapproving of this price gouging.

According to Anatoly, the most his team of two can make in a day is about 3000 rubles ($50), and that is only if the current and weather are just right and there’s no competition.

On this particular day, the team collects 30 leeches in a few hours.

“Not bad. We’ll try again tomorrow,” Anatoly concludes with Buddhist optimism.

UNDERWATER EL DORADO

For many visitors to the delta, it’s not what happens on land or even on the water that is most interesting. Thousands of underwater fishermen from across Russia come here every year. Taking up residence in tents or in land-based or floating shacks, they head out to tour the underwater world of the reed beds. They come for the water’s crystal clarity, the variety of fish, and, most importantly, their abundance.

Artur Ponomaryov, a 53-year-old oncological surgeon from Moscow, comes to the delta every year to a fishing base located in a small Kalmyk village. He likes the comfort the base affords and the “everything included” amenities. Admittedly, these amenities are fairly modest: some good Kalmyk cooking with lots of fish dishes, a room protected from mosquitoes, and a refrigerator for his catch.

“Beginning in May, this place is a true El Dorado for underwater fishing. The transparency of the water, the moderate depths, and, most important, the fact that you can find all sorts of fish: grass carp [bely amur or Ctenopharyngodon idella], common carp [sazan or Cyprinus carpio], northern pike, and Wels catfish [som or Silurus glanis].”

At some point, I lose count listening to fishermen list the varieties of fish they see here. He continues:

“But every fish requires a different hunting style. The most desirable, the common carp – for that one you’ve got to lie in wait on the bottom. When you’re swimming underwater in the delta, it’s unlike any other place in Russia. One moment you see thousands of common rudds [krasnopyorki, Scardinius erythrophthalmus], a whole school of bream [leshch, Abramis brama], and there’ll be a common carp regally swimming right in the middle. You go for a carp and wind up with a bream. That’s how dense the fish are here!

Those who come to fish in the delta don’t aim to catch as many fish as they can, Artur tells me. Like other tourists, they mostly just want to admire the scenery – both above water and below.

“In a day, in five hours under water, I select just a few fish to spear,” the doctor tells me.

In summer, especially in June and July, the delta is blanketed with swarms of biting black flies. Fishing from the shore becomes almost impossible. “But underwater,” Artur chuckles, “we’re safe.”

COSSACKS ARMED

Another party I encountered amid the steppe’s yellow earth and blue sky was made up of Terek Cossacks, descendants of the conquerors of the Caucasus (Kalmykia sits at the northern end of the Caucasus). Perhaps because of the fact that, for generations, they have grown up embroiled in wars and inter-tribal conflict, they have a bold and aggressive fishing style. They had set up their camp in a thicket of brambles and reeds, on the edge of a small lake. They hadn’t brought much food along, relying on their catch. Their manner is straightforward and masculine. The Cossacks began their fishing before dawn, some using spinning rods, others bobbers. In a few days, they’ve caught enough to feed all their relatives and neighbors: their trunks are filled with buckets of salted Caspian roach (vobla, Rutilus caspicus) and common rudds. They also salt and smoke carp.

“We like May in the delta mainly because of the roach,” says Yuri, a farmer who was taking a five-day vacation immediately after his spring sowing. “They’re sitting in the sea just waiting for the water in the channels to rise enough for them to get through. And once they’re in the delta, they’ll literally bite at anything.”

“Of course, in the fall, the fish are plumper,” says Yevgeny, an elderly wheat farmer in a straw hat. “They’ve fattened themselves up for winter.”

His son, a rural physical education teacher, fills me in on how the roach is salted. “It’s simple: we stack them in buckets and pails and layer them with salt. Then my father and I hang them in the garage and attic.”

For bait, the fishermen use ordinary cans of corn from the supermarket. A dollar can last a whole week of fishing.

“But why do you come here to fish – it’s not just about the fish, is it?” I ask the Cossacks as we sit around a campfire.

“Here we get a break from everything: from the tractor, from our homes. We turn off our phones and relax...” Yevgeny chuckles, as he hands me some cured fatback. “Here you go, Andrei – a gift of our homemade salo. Fish you can catch, salo you can’t.”

Although I made many acquaintances, it would be wrong to say the delta is full of people. Here, you can wander for hours – days even – without meeting a single human being. Its unusual terrain, unique climate, and treacherous weather serve as a sort of self-defense against human encroachment, construction, and industry. Indeed, the delta is most welcoming to people who come here with respect and without unbridled greed.

Against the rest, the delta has its own means of defense.