not pierce and the bites are mostly empty. Use the largest drills. They are obtained at the place of fishing and kept in a jar of clean cold water.

Artificial flies for catching grayling with drill replanting are used only in drill color. Their main tones are close to the color of the drills living in the Angara, i.e. the color of leaf tobacco, gray-green, green-brown and a protective color with a red tint.

With the advent of grasshoppers, fishermen add them to artificial cargo flies. This method is also known as "sandwich" fishing. One grasshopper, without an artificial fly, is not used by Irkutsk fishermen for grayling. While the water in the Angara is cold and bright, the best flies are considered by anglers to be made of white cotton chenille or pure white material that replaces it, as well as flies made of woolen threads of various burgundy colors. Burgundy flies can be light, dark and almost black tones with different shades. With warming air and water, it is better to use flies of canary color with a pink tint, carrot color with an orange tint, the color of caviar, egg yolk and various red flies. Simultaneously with the above, grayling well takes artificial flies of burgundy color with a yellow lower part of the body and a bronze filament in the form of 4 - 5 shiny transverse ribs. Such flies do not have an additional hook and are used without replanting a grasshopper.

All artificial flies used for grayling fishing on the Angara are equipped with antennae and legs made of dyed or black horsehair. The flies, made for catching with replanting a live drill, as a rule, do not have antennae and legs.

Catching grayling at the source of the Angara with spinning tackle from the shore requires a certain skill and dexterity from the angler. The bottom here is even over almost the entire width of the reach and has the same depth. The difference in depth is only due to whether the angler is fishing above or below the Shaman Stone. Above this famous and legendary island and near it, the depth is shallow, so you can fish without the use of a mobile float. Below Nikola, the depth of the river reaches 4 - 5 meters or more, and it is impossible to do without a sliding influx. Grayling in the upper reaches of the river lives along its entire width from one bank to another, therefore, in order to make long casts, heavy tackle is needed. Anglers who can throw farther than others are more likely to catch cautious graylings.

Bites in a fast current are sharp. A grayling caught at first seems not to be a living fish, but a hook hook on a stone. Only after some time it is possible to determine that a fish has been caught and approximately what size. Due to the high resistance of the water, it is impossible to pull the fish against the current. It is necessary, winding the line onto the reel, go towards the fish, lifting the rod with the tip up and holding the line in a taut position. You need to go towards the fish until it is opposite the angler. So it is easier to pull it to the shore and drag it onto the stones. To keep the caught fish alive until the end of the day, it can be planted on a long, thin, durable hook and placed in the water away from the shore. Coastal fishermen use various cages and nets to store live fish, but, lowered near the shore, the fish are beaten by constantly oncoming waves from passing motorboats and boats.

The next section of the Angara, where Irkutsk, Usolsk and Angara fishermen constantly fish, stretches from the dam of the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station to the beginning of the Bratsk reservoir. The depth of the river and the speed of its flow are completely preserved here. But the living conditions and diet of fish have changed a lot, the number of fishermen has increased, and the reaches have become crowded and noisy.

The rowing, silent fleet, so convenient for fishing in ancient times, is now being replaced by a motorized one. Some anglers on motor boats behave on the water as befits people who devote their leisure time to their favorite pastime and observe real discipline. Unfortunately, there are still motor reels that do not catch fish themselves and do not give it to others.

The great depth and speed of the river, constantly cruising boats and motor ships raising a large wave, create certain difficulties for fishermen. Catching a grayling in such conditions is not an easy task. These difficulties are aggravated by the fact that due to the variable operation of the turbines of the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station below its dam, the water level in the Angara changes several times a day. This difference is quite large, so it greatly affects the behavior of the fish. When the water level rises, the fish takes the bait just as badly as when it rises after prolonged rains,

But despite the difficulties and various difficulties, the army of amateur anglers does not decrease, but increases every year.

Fishing for grayling from a boat is different from fishing from the shore. It is easier to determine the depth of the site from a boat, there is no need to make long casts, you can carry out cargo tackle well and correctly with a strong “top”, moving from place to place, you can catch a large area of ​​the river that is inaccessible to coastal fishermen. From the boat, you can quickly or rather make hooking fish when biting.

It is more difficult to fish a caught fish against the current from a boat than from the shore, since the angler cannot go towards it and thereby weaken the resistance of the water. Resourceful fishermen install a winch on the boat to immerse the anchor in the water and lift it, winding on it not 15 - 20 meters of steel thin, soft cable, but 100 - 150 meters. When grasping a large fish, the angler throws the “dog” off the winch comb and lowers the boat on a cable towards the fish caught on the hook. Thus, holding the forest in a taut position, the angler swims up to the fish and, substituting the landing net, pulls it out of the water.

For хранения живой рыбы в кормовом отсеке гребных лодок рыболовы оборудуют садки с циркуляцией свежей воды, куда опускают пойманную рыбу. There is no such comfort in motor boats; fish cannot be kept alive and clean. And often the housewives complain that the fish caught by the owner of the motor boat smells of gasoline, and not everyone will agree to eat it.

As noted, the grayling, accustomed to the hustle and bustle, no longer pays attention to noise and inconvenience and takes baits on a common basis. These grounds have long been known to anglers: good weather, skillfully made gear and accessories, excellent baits, normal water levels in the river and Olympic calmness and endurance of the fisherman.

Below the hydroelectric dam, Irkutsk and other fishermen use the same bait and bait as on the reaches at the source of the Angara, so there is no point in repeating what was said earlier.

With the onset of autumn cold, ice banks appear near the banks of the Angara, and with the onset of frost, slush appears on the stretches. At first, in separate islands, and then in an almost continuous mass, it floats downstream, creating a characteristic noise inherent only to it. Separate islands of sludge collide, their frozen edges pile up, freeze, and whole ice fields are formed from small islands, which, as they move down, increase in size.

The Angara freeze-up starts from below and moves upstream. Ice fields, having reached the edge of freezing, form a jam. This ice dam raises the water level by several meters. So, before the construction of the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station, during freezing in January frosts, the water level in the Angara was so high that it reached the area named after. Kirov, and the houses on the Embankment were flooded almost to the very windows. In those not so distant times, special commissions were created at the Irkutsk City Council to combat winter floods. Sometimes such “pampering” of our beautiful Angara was costly for the people of Irkutsk and residents of coastal settlements, since the freeze-up usually took place at a temperature of about -40 ° C, so the consequences of the flood were the most unpleasant.

Currently, such disasters do not occur in winter. Freezing on the Angara is calm. Its terms have not changed much. The freeze-up border reaches Irkutsk, but the river remains open within the city.

At the end of autumn, it is less and less common to see a fishing boat on the Angara. The icy wind and fog are not very tempting to sit still in the middle of the river and wait for good luck. Less and less people appear on the banks with rods and spinning rods. But the most enthusiastic anglers still fish all autumn, winter and early spring. In autumn and winter, sliding cargo floats of a special design are used. In warm weather, in cargo floats, holes for passing scaffolding are made inside the float itself. For зимней ловли такие приспособления не годятся, так как отверстия сразу замерзают и наплавы не передвигаются. In order for them to work flawlessly in any cold, special rings made of thin steel wire are installed on the outside of the