Astrakhan, Russian Cup

I'll try to keep it short. After taking part in the Black Sea stage of the Russian Championship, I got a tempting offer from other competitors that I couldn't refuse. Namely, to ride with them a mere thousand kilometers from Gelendzhik to the Russian Cup in Astrakhan. Team "Solaris", made up of Vladimir Stepanovich Dazhaev and the Tityaevs, father and son, packed the car tighter and gave me a seat. I should say that the competition calendar of the RFPR (Russian Federation of Spearfishing) is set up so that 4 competitions are held on different waters within 1.5-2 months. The first is the Black Sea stage in Gelendzhik, at sea, then a week later the Russian Cup in Astrakhan in the Volga delta, followed by the Ural stage, a lake competition. And coming up soon, in August, is the final European stage on the Volga in the city of Samara, which I really want to go to as a team and compete for Azerbaijan. Looking for like-minded people!!!

Now about Astrakhan itself... After competing in Gelendzhik and getting to know the guys better, we decided to form a combined team of individual competitors (that is, athletes without a team). We named the team "Friendship of Peoples" - A. Terentyev (Samara), Khristenko (Chelyabinsk) and me (Baku). Results in the individual standings: Khristenko - second place, Terentyev - seventh, me - sixth. And in the team standings we took first place, winning the Russian Cup challenge trophy. and By common decision, the Cup went to Samara.

Friends, the Volga delta is really something else!!!!! Such a concentration of different fish, both in size and in species, I haven't seen even in the Red Sea. Basically, I shot pretty much every river fish I know there, except catfish, because catfish hunting has its own specifics. But I shot enough carp there to last me a year! I took a couple of good pike (about 4 kilos), buffalo, tench, and crucian carp and rudd were darting around like crazy. The training camp was held on the water without spearguns (since the fishing ban ended on the day the competition started). It's a strange feeling, I tell you, to be underwater, holding your breath, watching a group of 5-8 kilo carp swim right by you, you furiously bend your index finger and... but you realize they're going to swim away anyway. After about an hour of this masochism you slowly get used to the state where you want to but... can't :))))))

Honestly, I also shared this thought with the organizers: in principle, the qualifying weight should have been raised, say, to 5 kg for carp, probably 2-2.5 kg for pike and 8 kg for catfish. Because a lot of, let's say, small fish got shot.

http://www.tetis.ru/?p=sf_news&id=1088

Of course, I'd like to compete with my own Baku team, which we'll hopefully manage to put together here with joint efforts...