Lamėstas
Lamėstas is a lake in the territory of Utena district municipality, 1 km north of Saldutiškis, near Kuktiškės–Linkmenys road. The area 57.9 ha. The length (from the west to the north-east) 2 km, the greatest width 0.4 km. In the north, near the middle part of Lamėstas there is a peninsula. The surface altitude 159.8 m. The greatest depth 5.6 m (in the middle of the western part), average depth 3.2 m. The lake is of glacial trough origin. The area of the basin 18.4 km2. The coastline is finely winding of the length of 4.9 km. The banks, mostly high, are deteriorating in some places. Five rivulets flow into Lamėstas; a rivulet Kemeša flows through (from Kemešys lake); Lamėstas belongs to the basin of Žeimena. The flowage of the lake 308 %.
Now Lamėstas is not especially fishy. When commercial fishing was at its peak such lakes like Lamėstas, without significant falls in the bottom and of ideally prolonged shape, were overfished very fast in 1982- 1985. There have been a couple of more or less successful stockings with fish. After noticing that the bed of the lake is hard in places, graveled, pebbled and there are a lot of small roach, bleaks, small white breams which just flourished after the destruction of the population of local breams, it was decided to stock with trout. Some of them having found here an excellent feeding base grow up to 7 kilograms.
The acquaintance with the lake could be started from the rivulet Kemeša. It flows from Gėlinis lake (4.3 ha), collects Kemešys’ (54.6 ha) water, then stops for a while in Saldutiškis (about 1.0 ha) pond. The number of pikes in the lake is small, especially when deprived of their food by trout. Meanwhile silver carps having escaped from Saldutiškis pond have flourished and grow up to 1.5-2,0 kilograms. Here, rudds grow up to half a kilo and tench up to a kilo.
Lamėstas lake has been inhabited by crayfish since long. In 1963 crayfish used to be caught commercially. The abundant population of crayfish attracted scientists‘ attention, studies were carried out in 1964, and in 1967 the lake was stocked with crayfish.
The studies in September, 2005, showed that the population of crayfish in the lake was small. During the studies in 2013, in Lamėstas 10 species of fish were caught: pike, roach, common bleak, bream, white bream, rudd, trout, tench, ruff and bass. The dominant species according to the biomass is considered tench, trout and bream being subdominant ones. There are enough predatory fish as well as low-value fish (bleaks, ruff), which are not abundant. The population of the latter is regulated by trout which breed here quite successfully. The lake is very productive. Abundant rudds grow very slowly because of feeding competition.
