Fishing has always been a core activity for the people living along the middle of the Volga river and that includes Syzran. The middle Volga was once replete with a broad range of valuable species of fish, perhaps the only place that had more fish was Astrakhan: the types of fish one could catch in the Volga in Syzran included sturgeon, sterlet, beluga, stellate sturgeon, whitefish, catfish, pike. There was also a lot of fish in the Syzranka and Krymza rivers. To a large extent, that was partly caused by the flour mills located along the banks of the rivers. They dumped excess flour into the rivers, essentially throwing feasts for the fish.

In Syzran, the selling of fish was one of the most common forms of commercial activity alongside the selling of bread and cattle. Fish was sold to merchants from Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan, and it was also brought to Russia’s largest fair: Makaryevskaya. Volga fish was regarded as a delicacy, and it was even served as part of royal meals.

People learned how to fish long before the advent of such fishing gear as hooks, lines, rods, weights, fishing nets, and drag nets. One fishing tackle for catching large fish was the fish fork which looks like pitchfork. The prongs, or tines, on a fish fork were usually made of metal, although some ethnic groups made them from wood or even bone. Russian fishers used fish forms that were made from a steel pitchfork put on a long thin rod about 4 meters in length. Each fish fork could have between two and 12 tines.

The way it was used a fish fork is a typical tackle for catching fish in lakes and rivers. Although catching fish with a fish fork was relatively easy, it did require some skill. In the spring, summer and fall there were several ways to fish with a fish fork: people either waded into the shallows, or they would dive into the river or fish from a boat. Occasionally a fish fork could be thrown like a harpoon, in which case a rope would be tied to the handle. At night fish were caught from the bank or from a boat using artificial light, this kind of fishing was called beaming. In winter, fish forks were used to fish through ice holes, in which case light or some bait was used to draw fish to the ice hole.

In the Caspian sea, the most common type of fish fork was a two-tine fish fork with a metal ring on the handle, through which a rope was run, this rope was then wrapped around the hand or tied to the boat. Another type of fish fork was somewhat similar to a harpoon. It was used for hunting marine animals.