1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 207: Winter Stilt Fishing Nets Harvest

Just after he walked a few steps, Deng Zhaocai, who was sitting at the dinner table and bragging to others as usual, looked over.

"Brother Qiang, where are you going? Are you going to push the fishing net?!" Deng Zhaocai stopped bragging halfway and asked loudly.

"Let's try our luck in the shallow water and see if we can catch something!" Liang Ziqiang paused and said.

"Fuck, you taught me how to push this a while ago, but I haven't really pushed it many times since I learned it. Wait a minute, I'll go get the stuff from your house and play a few with you guys at noon!" Deng Zhaocai suddenly had an idea and followed the trend.

"The water is cold, so we can't go too deep. We can just fish a little near the shore. Are you sure you want to go?"

"Isn't shallow water just right? I feel like I haven't learned it well yet, so I won't go in deep water yet!" Deng Zhaocai has already stood up and was about to run home.

Liang Ziqiang quickly pulled him back: "If you really want to go, why go home? I have two sets of ready-made stilt fishing nets sitting there!"

Seeing that this guy was determined to join in the fun, he didn't stop him. He simply went back into the house, took out another set of stilt fishing net tools and handed them to Deng Zhaocai.

As for the rain boots, he found Liang Zifeng's and asked Deng Zhaocai to try and see if they could be worn.

Deng Zhaocai tried it while looking left and right and sniffling:

"What's that smell? Where does it come from? The special brew is really intoxicating!"

"Stop smelling it, your feet aren't any better!"

Liang Zifeng's feet are smelly, there's nothing we can do about it. But Deng Zhaocai's own smelly feet aren't necessarily any better, are they? They're the same, so don't complain about one thing or the other, just make do with what you have.

After Deng Zhaocai put them on, he found that the rain boots were a little tight, but they were still wearable, so he immediately picked up the whole set of tools and set off.

After a while, the sharp-eyed Duobao discovered that they were going to catch fish, and followed them with his head shaking.

Duobao has now begun to take shape as a big dog. It’s okay now that the wind has stopped, so he can follow if he wants.

The two people and the dog came to the beach. The beach was really quiet today because it was not low tide. In fact, the fishing net is used during high tide rather than low tide, so no one came to catch fish at this time.

The villagers who usually like to use high-legged fishing nets did not come either. It is okay to use them in the summer, but in the winter, there are still few people who suddenly come up with the idea like Liang Ziqiang. After all, it is inconvenient with cold hands and feet, and the catch is uncertain, unlike other seasons when you can definitely catch a lot of shrimps or even fish.

This time, instead of tying bare feet to the stilt sticks as usual, they wore rain boots and tied them to the sticks together with the rain boots.

Duobao watched them walk into the shallow water on stilts and wagged his tail, meaning:
You two go and take care of yourselves, I'll take care of the buckets and other things for you!
As soon as the two walked into the shallow water, even though the wind had died down long ago, the sea still felt quite cold, and it was a bit cold even with thick coats on.

They walked forward for a while until the sea water gradually submerged the stick that supported their feet. The waves just rose and fell under their soles, and then they stopped moving forward.

In this way, their feet did not enter the water. From a distance, it looked like they were walking on the water, floating in the air as if walking on flat ground. The legendary floating on water.

Liang Ziqiang pushed the triangular fishing net into the water, holding it very low so that it kept close to the mud and sand on the seabed.

It was a little different from the usual fishing operations, this time it was almost close to the ground, scraping the seabed.

This is because this time the goal is not to catch fish, but to catch clams.

Clams cannot swim to the deep sea to spend the winter like fish do. Instead, they all bury themselves in the mud about 4 cm deep in the shallow sea, similar to hibernation, to spend the winter.

The wind last night stirred up the waves, which must have disturbed the sweet dreams of some clams and knocked them out of hibernation. The shivering clams at this moment are probably clinging to the seabed, cursing "Fuck you!"

Liang Ziqiang pushed the fishing net while teaching Deng Zhaocai how to operate it. Taking advantage of this opportunity today, he taught him a little more so that he could learn more.

Deng Zhaocai is now relatively stable. As long as he doesn't go too deep, he can still walk calmly.

I pushed it twice, but both times came up empty-handed, with no gain.

Pushing and moving for a while, a lot of clams began to appear in the net.

The off-white and light yellow ones are obviously not clams. Unexpectedly, the first thing I caught was flower clams. Flower clams, like clams, also hid in the mud and sand nearby to spend the winter. But normally, there are more clams along the coast in Changwang Village in winter.

He pushed the net and lifted it, catching several nets of clams and pouring them into the fish basket floating nearby.

After moving around, I finally saw more dark clams. Basically, I could scrape up a few every time I scraped along the seabed.

As the wind was blowing, a handful of kelp suddenly floated over from the sea; when I turned around, a handful of camel hair appeared.

"Brother Qiang, do you want to pick some seaweed? Although it's not valuable, it can be used as a dish. Fresh seaweed is always better than dried one!" Deng Zhaocai asked from the side.

"Go ahead and fish it out. There's nowhere else to put it. Just put it on the oil drum!"

There was nothing to complain about at this time of year. However, the bamboo basket was obviously not suitable for storing seaweed and could not hold so much. He suggested simply placing the caught seaweed on oil drums. These empty oil drums and oil bottles were tied to the bamboo basket to increase buoyancy.

"Be careful, the seaweed is wet and a bit heavy, and it's hard to use the high-legged fishing net!" Liang Ziqiang reminded.

"Don't worry, nothing will happen. I feel like I have made it. At least I am much better than that idiot Li Liang!"

Deng Zhaocai started bragging again.

He was boasting for only a few minutes. He lifted a bunch of wakame and lost his balance, and fell into the water.

Fortunately, Liang Ziqiang was watching and quickly reached out and pulled it when he saw something was wrong.

"Are you sure you've graduated?"

"Damn, this kelp is too fat, it's hurting me!" Deng Zhaocai decisively put the blame on the seaweed.

"Forget it, just concentrate on catching clams. You can catch some shrimps if you come across them, but forget about the seaweed. You'll go crazy if you fall into the cold water. It's not worth it!" Liang Ziqiang suggested.

This time, Deng Zhaocai listened to the advice and never touched seaweed again, and focused on catching clams.

"Damn, there are so many shrimps in this net. They don't look like sharp shrimps, but white shrimps!" Deng Zhaocai shouted again.

Liang Ziqiang also discovered that after two consecutive fishing trips, the number of clams has decreased, but a lot of shrimps have been caught.

This shrimp is not a sharp shrimp, but the kind with a transparent body and slight blue or red spots.

"Little white shrimp! Yeah, how could I have forgotten? These shrimps rarely go to the deep sea. In winter, they like to burrow and hibernate in holes in the shallow sea!"

The scientific name of this small white shrimp is Litopenaeus fasciatus, also known as "five-whisker shrimp" and "spring shrimp".

Unlike most shrimps that migrate to the deep sea, the white shrimp is more surviving. In the winter, if it can find caves or holes on the shallow seabed, it will give up going to the deep sea and stay in the cave for the whole winter.

Moreover, this white shrimp has a habit of living in groups. If there are a lot of small holes, they will stay together; if there is a big cave, it will be even better, and they will just stay in a big nest and spend the winter in the same cave together.

"Look, keep scraping in this area, maybe there are still a lot of small white shrimps!"

Liang Ziqiang felt that since they were able to catch several nets of spring shrimps, given the shrimps’ habit of living in groups, there might be a lot of holes nearby, hiding a large nest of spring shrimps.

Then last night they were all stirred out by the wind and waves and lay on the bottom of the sea.

These shrimps are more valuable than clams anyway. If you cook them yourself, they are much better than clams.

No matter how many clams and flower clams you catch, you can only make soup. If you can catch a lot of these spring shrimps, they can be used as a main dish. If the quantity is large, you can make a main dish for several days in a row.

This was an unexpected gain.

Two chapters have been published in the early morning. Happy reading!
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(End of this chapter)