: A schoolboy is lost in the taiga and goes to a protected lake full of fish. Having found his way home, he leads his father’s fishing team to a new place, after which the lake is called by his name.
The fishermen from the brigade of Grigory Afanasevich Shadrin, Vasyutkin’s father, were unlucky. Water in the river rose, and the fish went into the depths. Soon a warm wind blew from the south, but the catches remained small. The fishermen went far to the lower reaches of the Yenisei and stopped in a hut built once by a scientific expedition. There they remained to wait for the autumn Putin.
The fishermen rested, mending nets and tackle, fished with fish, and Vasyutka went every day to pick pine nuts - the fishermen loved this delicacy very much. Sometimes the boy looked into new textbooks brought from the city, preparing for school. Soon there were no bumps on the nearest cedars, and Vasyutka decided to go on a long hike for nuts. According to the old tradition, the mother forced the boy to take with him a shred of bread and matches, and without a gun Vasyutka never went to the taiga.
For some time Vasyutka walked along the notches in the trees, preventing him from getting lost. Having collected a full pack of cones, he already wanted to return, and suddenly he saw a huge capercaillie. Taking a closer look, the boy shot and wounded the bird. Having caught up with the wounded capercaillie and twisting his neck, Vasyutka looked around, but could not find a nick. He tried to find familiar signs, but soon completely got lost. The boy remembered the terrible tales of the Polar Region lost in the taiga, he panicked, and he rushed to run wherever his eyes looked.
Vasyutka stopped only when night fell. He made a fire, and roasted capercaillie. The boy decided to save bread for the most extreme case. The night was alarming - Vasyutka all the time seemed that someone was sneaking up on him. Waking up, the boy climbed onto the tallest tree to find out which side the Yenisei was in, but he did not find the yellow strip of larch, which usually surrounded the river. Then he scooped up full pockets of pine nuts and set off.
Towards evening, Vasyutka began to notice under the feet the bumps of bones that are found near ponds. However, he did not go out to the Yenisei, but to a large lake full of fish and frightened game. There he shot several ducks and settled down for the night. Vasyutka was very sad and scared. He remembered his school, and regretted that he was a bully, did not listen in class, smoked and gave tobacco to first-graders from Nenets and Evenki families. They smoked since childhood, but the teacher forbade, and now Vasyutka was ready to completely quit smoking, just to see his native school again. In the morning, the boy looked at the fish, whose schools were on the shore, and realized that it was not lake, but river species. This meant that a river should flow out of the lake, which would lead him to the Yenisei.
In the middle of the day, cold autumn rain began. Vasyutka climbed under a spreading fir, ate a precious crust of bread, curled up in a ball and dozed off, and when he woke up, it was already getting dark. It was still raining. The boy made a fire, and then he heard the distant whistle of the ship - the Yenisei was somewhere nearby. He got out to the river the next day. While he was considering where to go, up or downstream, a two-deck passenger ship sailed past him. In vain, Vasyutka waved his hands and shouted - the captain mistook him for a local resident and did not stop.
At night, Vasyutka settled here. In the morning, he heard a sound that could only be made by the exhaust pipe of a fishing boat assembly boat. The boy threw all the stored firewood into the fire, started screaming, firing a shotgun, and he was noticed. The captain of the bot turned out to be familiar to Uncle Kolyada. He brought Vasyutka to his relatives, who had been looking for him for five days in the taiga.
Two days later, the boy took the whole fishing team, headed by his father, to the reserved lake, which the fishermen began to call Vasyutkin. There were so many fish in it that the team switched to lake fishing. Soon, a blue speck appeared on the regional map with the inscription "Vasyutkino Lake." It migrated to the regional map already without an inscription, and only Vasyutka himself could find it on the map of the country.
