» 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.

At 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, and 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 in 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.

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Where can you go fishing and admire the northern beauties in the northwestern region of Russia? Places of great beauty and fishing happiness are located not far from St. Petersburg. This is Lake Ladoga. And today we will find out where fish is caught on Ladoga.

The largest inland body of water in the Western European region. The lake covers an area of ​​about 18,000 square kilometers and its volume is 908 cubic meters. The length of Ladoga along the coastline is about 1500 km. The length of the most beautiful section of skerries is about 800 kilometers. About 40 rivers flow into Ladoga, but it gives birth only to the beautiful Neva.
In terms of bottom relief, depending on the area, the reservoir basin has a very strong difference. Sharp changes in depth in the northern areas (from 60 to 220 meters), in the southern areas the difference is less (from 15 to 70 meters). The deepest point is located on Valaam (233 m).


Freeze-up begins in October, and the ice melts in the period of late April - early May. The lake is very rarely completely covered with ice; the center is ice-free. The weather is very changeable. The change is abrupt. The sun was just shining and it was calm; in a few hours it could give way to a storm.

Islands of Lake Ladoga.

More than 500 large and small islands are located throughout Ladoga. The Valaam island archipelago consists of large areas of rock and land. A wonderful place is the Ladoga skerries, the straits between the islands. On the island of Konevets, 600 years ago, one of the most significant places for the Orthodox was founded and erected. The monastery of the same name attracts many believers and tourists.

Fishing on Ladoga

But a huge number of people flock here who worship another faith - FISHING. The many species of fish that live here, the beauty of these places, and significant catches are the reasons for worshiping these places.

Just before the trip. You need to immediately decide on the fish you would like to catch. The choice of fishing location and the selection of “competent” gear depend on this. After all, in the north there are mainly fish that live only here, and also in other places. Although there are fish that live throughout the reservoir - these are vendace and smelt. And now the answer to the question, people who have not been here and do not suffer from “Ladoga syndrome.”

What kind of fish can you catch on Ladoga?

A huge number of fish live here, more than 60 species. Salmon, trout and palia are a coveted trophy, but not everyone gets it. Roach and cheese, smelt and grayling, ide and smelt. Although they are small, they also have their connoisseurs.

On the south side, the coveted trophy is the striped zander predator. Shallow water and dense soil are his favorite hunting places. In the north, elite fish live - sterlet, Baltic sturgeon and pali. But to catch bream, it is better to go south.

Four species of lake and three species of river whitefish live in these waters. These are just the main desired trophies. It should be remembered that there are still large perch and pike. But to cool things down a bit and calm down the people already packing their bags, here's the next chapter.

Peculiarities.

Center, at a depth of more than 39 meters, there are no fish, or very few of them. Smelt in the south is larger than in northern waters. In general, most fish live in the southern parts of the reservoir. And the fisherman must solve the problem:

Where to fish?

The consumer attitude towards nature, business management, barbaric treatment of the lake and its shallowing reduce the size of fish schools. But so far these changes are not global and there is someone to catch.
Large burbot and grayling prefer the north-western areas. Pike, perch, salmon - these are best fished for in southern waters. Sturgeon species love the cool water of the north.
But here it should be noted that you can find all these fish and not only in these places. Talk about happy fishing. When exactly does it bite, and not just one nod per day. And therefore, many fishermen have been coming to their favorite places for many years.

When to catch?

Depending on the time of year, methods and equipment undergo changes. Let's take a closer look at spring, as an example. The most crucial period in the life of fish begins - spawning. She approaches the shore and enters the rivers, where she spawns. First, the roach begins to become active before spawning. This begins even before the ice melts; on the most successful days, you can catch large fish weighing about a kilogram. In spring, look for roach in the shallows, at the edge of the reeds. For bait we use mosquito and fly larvae.

Then comes the time for bream and silver bream. Look in the same place as the roach, fish with a medium-sized hook, along the bottom or middle. Bait pearl barley, corn, maggot. And then comes the most wonderful moment for pike anglers. At this time, Pike weighing up to 6 kg is often caught. They are caught using a variety of baits. And large spinners and various spinners. It is very good to catch with both floating and diving wobblers. In this case, it is better to use twitching wiring.

Proven fishing spots

• Mouth of the Chernaya River, Koshkino village. The desired trophies of these places for spinning anglers are large perch and pike, as well as burbot on the bottom and roach on the float.
• The confluence of the Volkhovets River, the village of Krenitsy. Bream and roach are for lovers of float gear, but spinning rods await toothy trophies for pike and perch. Such methods of fishing as twitching and trolling have proven themselves well. This base has become widely known because of the large fish and their quantity.
• At the intersection of the Ladoga Canal and the Nazia River, the village of the same name. Here, predators are caught well.
• Favorite place for ice fishing lovers. Large bream and pike, desirable trophies. The base is located in the village of Lednevo. It is caught well with both a jig and a balancer.
• Kobona River, base in the village of the same name. Good fishing all year round. Plenty of bass and large sizes make this a very attractive spot. Pike and pike perch take well when twitching with a wobbler.

Winter fishing on Ladoga

Winter is very treacherous in these places. Fast ice breaks off from the shore due to very strong winds. But their lovers stop at nothing. Fishing is good near the shore, but the best places are located further towards the middle of the lake. In winter, perch and roach migrate to depths of up to 6 meters. More attractive places for fishing are isthmuses of channels and between pits, not far from the shore. At this time, it is better to look for pike in the reeds, at shallow depths. The most exciting thing in winter is to catch perch using a cat's eye jig and a vertical spoon.

Krinitsy, Ladoga, fishing.

On the southern shore of the lake, near the confluence of the Volkhov River, there is the Krinitsy fishing base. The city of Novaya Ladoga, on the outskirts of which the base is located, was founded during the reign of Peter 1 and served as the center of ship transport routes. This was the “window to Europe”.

Residential area of ​​the base, with comfortable apartments, car camping, parking and parking for boats. This is all located in a protected area. It is rightfully considered the best base in the region.
There is something for every taste here. If you don't want to fish, for active people there are skis, an ice skating rink, snowmobiling and kite riding. A hovercraft will take you on an excursion to the hydroelectric dam and the walls of the fortress. Those who like to relax will find a Russian bathhouse and good cuisine, peace and quiet.
The Besedka restaurant awaits guests and will surprise them with delicious dishes prepared in the field kitchen. It is located right next to the boat pier.
Let your relaxation and excellent fishing help you take your mind off the hustle and bustle and worries.

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 parking cars 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 can 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 :)

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 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 sunrises 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, light spots 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 quickly walk 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 rapid 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 pine trees of unusual shape 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 to look at in the photograph, to travel with their 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!