Lake Liutsymer

A bronze signet-ring shield came out of the ground on the north shore of Liutsymer with a wolf on it, its head twisted back over its shoulder; a large bronze button turned up alongside, carrying the same animal, winged. Archaeologists date both to the Old Rus centuries and read the winged wolf as a borrowing of the Near Eastern simurgh — the kind of object a household with rank owned, not a farmer. They came from the Shatsk hillfort on the lake's northern rim, and they put a princely administration on this water eight hundred years ago.

Liutsymer is the third-largest of the Shatsk lakes and the only one that touches a town. Shatsk runs down to its northern shore, so the market, the bank and the pharmacy are a ten-minute walk from the reeds. It is also the lake anglers pick, and the two facts turn out to be connected.

Why the fish are here

The numbers are modest next to Svitiaz: 4.3 sq km of water, 8.7 km of shoreline, 11.2 metres at the deepest point and about four on average. Visibility runs 1.7 to 2 metres, well short of what the big lake manages, and the reason is the bed — sand overlaid with clayey silt and sapropel, with heavy weed through much of the shallows.

Poor for a postcard, excellent for fish. More than twenty species live here: silver crucian carp and tench as the everyday catch, with bream, roach and rudd, and among the predators pike, perch and the zander Shatsk fishermen are proudest of. The better fish hold along the boggy southern shores, reached from the water rather than the bank. Boats hire out from the lakeside bases, and the western shore has wooden platforms built over the weed.

The rules that actually apply

A spawning closure covers the whole Shatsk National Nature Park from 1 April to 10 June, and it is often described as a total ban. It is not quite that. Through the closure you may fish from the bank, outside the spawning grounds, with no more than two hooks per angler, or with a spinning rod and one artificial lure; boats and multi-hook rigs are what goes away. Crayfish stay closed until 30 June. Check the current park notice before travelling — the permitted zones move.

One rule has no give in it. If an eel comes up, it goes back: the European eel entered Ukraine's Red Data Book as endangered in 2021, and catching, selling or buying one is an offence — which also means the ‘local’ smoked eel offered around the lakes is imported.

Where the name came from

Two accounts compete and neither has been settled. Some scholars read the name as a Germanic compound of Luce and Meer, light sea. The village version is better: a prince promised the local people a fort to shelter behind and then cheated them out of it, so they called him a lytsemir, a hypocrite, and the insult stuck to his lake. Maps also carry the older spelling Liutsymyr; both forms are in daily use.

Around the lake in ten kilometres

An unsurfaced track rings the entire lake — about 10 km, an easy morning on a bike — and links everything worth stopping at. The hillfort rampart is now simply a good vantage point over the water. Haharin Park along the western shore is old timber coming down to the edge, cool at midday and the local choice for a picnic. The town beach on the north side is grass rather than sand, with changing huts and shallows that warm fast. And the Liutsymer oak, the veteran tree in the pines on the northern shore, is the landmark fishermen give directions by. Fifteen minutes on foot from the eastern side brings you to Lake Velyke Chorne and its sapropel mud, linked to Liutsymer by a narrow channel.

Staying, eating, and what the town gives you

Accommodation here is private rather than corporate: family estates a hundred metres back from the shore, plain timber fishing huts on the first line with a jetty and a boat thrown in, whole cottages with a wood stove and a sauna. Nothing on this lake is grand, and prices sit well under the Svitiaz waterfront.

Eating is the town's contribution. The best-known kitchen in Shatsk works with Volhynian home cooking and whatever came out of the lakes that morning — a heavy fish soup, tench baked in sour cream, potato pancakes with forest mushrooms. The morning fish market is the better ritual: buy a tench off the boats and grill it in the yard where you are staying.

The practical case for this lake is that walk into town: pharmacy, cash machine, supermarket and doctor are ten to fifteen minutes from the northern shore, which matters more with small children than any beach does. Two warnings. The southern margins are marsh, and what they produce after sunset is punishing, so pack a strong repellent. And this is border country: carry your passport or ID card, and, if you are a man between 18 and 60, your military registration document.