blowing way: during the spring flood of the river, a huge mass of water, somewhat restrained by the right bank, pushes with all its force onto the left bank, tears away large spaces from it and expands the existing channels, forming, by the way, new ones; sometimes this mass of water completely washes away shallow capes and ravines, breaking through a new deep channel where there was no mention of it before. As the waters recede, it turns out that in the main bed of the Volga there is less water, which becomes understandable if we take into account that a lot of it flows in newly dug branches. Therefore, it is not that the Volga waters are reduced here - their quantity may remain the same, but the problem is that these waters, scattered over several channels, force the fairway of its main channel to shallow, as a result of which ships very often have to go sideways, leaving the main Volga on the side, the shallow bed of which is very characteristically called the Old Volga by the people.
Fishing—"Winter Shlov".
In any case, the Volga is quite deep all the way to Astrakhan, and its appearance near Astrakhan is extremely majestic; a huge bay can accommodate an entire fleet, but this bay constitutes the most majestic link of the Volga; beyond Astrakhan, the river scatters into 70 branches and the closer to the sea, the more it fragments and becomes shallow, turning into the so-called razsyni--Shirovo spills of channels like the seaside, in which the great river is lost. The entire width of the space occupied by the mouth of the Volga, including its numerous channels and branches, is up to 120 versts in length. The last end of the river in the city of Monastyrsky is considered to be the RBaklashy channel beyond the Sayachny channel.
Generally speaking, the northern coast of the Castian Sea is undoubtedly shallowing due to the rise of the seabed; This phenomenon has been noticed for a long time. Perhaps
Because of this, the mouths of the rivers in general, flowing into the Caspian Sea from this side, are also shallow; In any case, the phenomenon does not rush in relation to the Volga alone: the mouth of the Urals also dried up, and many steppe rivers also disappeared into the sands of the steppes, once deep streams of water flowed there. Not very long ago, ships entered the port of Astrakhan by sea without hindrance; now the mouth of the Volga has become so shallow that cargo from above into the sea in Astrakhan is reloaded onto flat-bottomed ships, on which they are delivered to the nearest sea station, called “9 feet”, which is more than a mile from Astrakhan 100 ver.
Along the way below Yunotaevsk, in the intervals between the Cossack villages, on the banks of the Volga one comes across fisheries in the form of separate farmsteads called gangs; An indispensable accessory of each such fishery are two to three dozen boats called fishmongers, a glacier for salting fish, called an exit, and a gangway from the shore to the exit. From February onwards, feverish activity begins on the piers and gangs: ships and boats are straightened, caulked and pitched, sails and fishing nets are repaired, the fishery is put in order, the working people are recruited, flocking in tens of thousands from both the upper provinces and the steppes. The fish are waiting for the fish and roach, since it is at this time that fish are drawn from the Cassia Sea to spawn. All this fish wealth is divided into two types in the eyes of the fish industry: under the name of red fish we mean blue bluga, sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, and under the name of small fish we mean salmon, Bluefish, sterlet, carp, bream, catfish, pike perch, roach, roach and bullfish are of great importance in the fishing industry, the annual catch of which amounts to hundreds.