The lake is located on the central part of the East European Plain, about 130 km northeast of Moscow, in the basin of the Upper Volga.

[2][3] The surrounding shore and region is shaped by the receded glaciers of the last ice age, leaving a moraine-type landscape: gravelly formations of long ridges, extensive wetlands and meandering rivers, and occasional isolated hills.

[5] For aquatic habitat, the park is in the "Volga-Ural" freshwater ecoregion (WWF ID #410), a region that is characterized in general by a high number fish species but relatively few endemics.

The development of dams, reservoirs and catchments along the Volga have disrupted spawning sites and favored species adapted to slower moving waters.

[10] A large-sized vendance (Russian: "Ryapushka"), a freshwater whitefish of the Salmonidae, is endemic to Lake Pleshcheyevo; some authors describe it as a subspecies Coregonus albus Pereslavicus.

The Ryapuska was the subject of one of the Russian government's first public acts concerning conservation, when a ban on catching small whitefish was imposed in 1668.