Matyrskoye Reservoir

The Matyrskoye reservoir is the largest water body of Lipetsk Oblast: 45 square kilometres stretched for 40 kilometres along the Matyra river between Lipetsk and Gryazi, with depths up to 13 metres. The ten-kilometre dam was built in 1970–1976; the reservoir was originally intended to supply the NLMK steel plant, but those plans never materialised. Its legal history is dramatic: in the early 1990s the steel combine privatised it, and in 2004 a court ruling returned it to federal ownership. In the late 1990s the NLMK fishing shop was abolished. Today it is the oblast's main angling and recreation point: holiday bases and sanatoria stand on the wooded right bank, and the ice hosted the 2007 Russian and the 2008 world mormyshka championships. The ten-kilometre dam linking Novaya Zhizn with the R119 road, the sand spit at Kazinka and the upper reaches — the Khomut tract — are all worth a look.