The Volga River

The Volgograd water basin was established in the years of 1958—61 by The championship will be held in the Volga river, on the Volgograd basin, which is formed by the Volga hydroelectric dam. This is the longest of all the artificial Volga seas with the length of 546 km. The average depth is more than 10 meters.

Before the Volgograd basin was built there, the water level in Volga was constantly changing, thus there were permanent dredging works there on order to provide the navigation.

Since the Volga dam has been built, this is one of the largest water basins for the moment- the area is 3117 km and it is the third of the largest water basins after the Kuibyshev and the Rybinsk water basins.

Volga is the longest river of the European part of Russia. It starts from the Valdai hill out of the spring which is 225 m high from the sea level not far from the village named Volga-Verhovje in Ostashkovsky district of the Tver region and then goes up to the Caspian sea at the water level «minus 28 m». The total length of Volga is 3531 km. In comparison with all the world rivers it is the 14-th longest river, the 12-th river by its water area (1360 thousand m2), and the 16-th river by its average water discharge (more than 8 thousand m3/sec).

The water area of the championship is the numerous channels and gulfs.

The channel — is one of the parts of the water area which is the submerged river-bed of the arm of the river Volga. The channel is 250—500 m wide, 2—15 m deep. The water stream is slow, the river bottom is sandy&pelitic with the aquatic vegetation in its shallow waters along the banks. The banks are forested with cattail and bulrush, in some places you can see the bushes and the trees just next to the water. The submerged river-bed flows from one bank to the other, forming the shallow waters and underwater sand bars where the water flow is heavy. You can find the following predatory fish here — pike (esox lucius), perch (Perca fluviatilis), pikeperch (Lucioperca sandra), Volga zander (Lucioperca volgensis), eelpout (Lota lota), ide (Idus melanotus), chub (Aqualius cephalus L), asp (Aspius aspius), sheat-fish (Silurus glanis)..

The gulf — is one of the parts of the water area circled by the islands of bushes and trees with cattail and bulrush all round the islands. The gulf has a dissected coast line and in several places it is connected with the channel, thus in some part of the gulf the water flow is slow. The bottom of the gulf is silty, the depth is 1.0—7 m. One third part of the gulf is forested with the aquatic vegetation up to the water level. You can find the following predatory fish here — pike (esox lucius), perch (Perca fluviatilis), ide (Idus melanotus), chub (Aqualius cephalus L), asp (Aspius aspius).