Based on the analysis of literary sources on the history of fishing in rivers and reservoirs of Russia for the XX and the beginning of the XXI century, the characteristics of the current state of sterlet stocks by subjects in individual fisheries basins are given. The main reasons for the decrease in sterlet catches for the Volga basin are hydro–construction, for the rivers of Siberia – poaching. As a result of re-climatization measures and mass stocking of young sterlet by the 20s of the XXI century, «factory» populations of commercial sterlet were formed in individual reservoirs and rivers of the European part of the country.

The article considers the issue of assessing the long-term results of work on fisheries reclamation in inland waters of fisheries significance in Russia, carried out by the branches of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Glavrybvod” on the state task in terms of their effectiveness. The relationship between dredging and clearing of watercourse beds and the dynamics of the number of producers of semi-navigable and non-aquatic fish in these rivers during spawning migrations has not been established. With long-term mowing of wetland vegetation in the shallow waters of reservoirs, deltas of large rivers and estuaries, there is no increase in their commercial fish productivity. A number of examples show the opposite effect of this type of work, which leads to a local deterioration of the ecological state of these reservoirs. At the same time, the repeatedly proven method of combating higher aquatic vegetation in the reservoirs of the south of Russia in low water conditions as biomelioration, based on the introduction of fish, consumers of autotrophic products by regional branches of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Glavrybvod” is practically not used. When installing artificial spawning grounds in the littoral zone of reservoirs, regular ichthyological monitoring of the effectiveness of spawning on them is not carried out. There are no reliable data confirming the significant positive impact of artificial spawning grounds on the population dynamics of commercial fish species of the limnophilic ecological group under conditions of significant spring water level depletion in Russian reservoirs. When catching predatory and low-value fish species in water bodies, legal obstacles arise due to the fact that the volume of seizure of predatory fish includes commercial objects for which the ODE is established annually and their catch is already carried out according to industrial quotas.