1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 241: Floating Gill Nets Collect Thousands of Fish
After driving for a while, we arrived at the channel at Longju Mountain. The drizzle still did not stop, nor did it get heavier.

Although it was just a drizzle, it still made the skin feel cool when it fell on the forehead, cheeks and neck.

Li Liang couldn't help but sigh: "What kind of weather is this? A few days ago when we were in Longjuling, it was so hot that we took off all our shirts. It was like summer. Now that the temperature has dropped, it's like autumn or winter again!"

Deng Zhaocai bulged his eyes and said, "Isn't it good that the temperature has dropped? If it's like summer, would you dare to go to Longjuling?"

Li Liang was in a good mood when he thought about the fish he would catch soon. He made an exception and did not argue with him. He wiped the moisture from his forehead and said, "That's right."

"Spring, spring, people get crazy all the time. Isn't this the month they are talking about?" Liang Ziqiang also said.

To be honest, it was quite rare for them to travel in the sea with heavy rain. At this moment, it felt a bit like breaking through the clouds and fog. Thinking about it, it actually felt not bad.

On the sea, they also saw two dolphins jumping out of the water, as if they were also heading for the faint drizzle in the air. However, without the sun, the dolphins were not very colorful at this time.

It seems that scattered fish are beginning to reappear in the shallow sea.

However, we did not encounter any decent schools of fish along the way. In the shallow sea at this time of year, it is impossible for fish to be so numerous that they can gather in groups.

The two dolphins ran away in a blink of an eye, and they did not waste time chasing them. After all, there were much more important things to do in Longju Ridge.

They talked all the way, and they were getting closer and closer like riding on clouds.

When they entered the entrance between the strait and Longju Mountain, Liang Ziqiang saw the buoy still swaying on the water surface that was dozens of meters long. At the same time, his heart suddenly "clicked".

"What's going on? Why are there so many dead fish floating up?!" Zhu Tianpeng on the boat exclaimed first.

I saw at least a dozen or twenty fish floating on the water next to the buoy.

"The weather has been sunny these days, and I didn't see a chance to come. It seems that the fish caught on your floating net couldn't hold on and died!" Li Liang also shook his head and sighed.

The same thought popped into Liang Ziqiang's mind at the first moment.

There were three days in between, plus the two fish at the beginning and the end, that’s more than four days. Maybe the fish caught in the gillnet couldn’t find anything to eat and really starved to death?
If this is true, only so many have surfaced, and who knows how many more are still hanging online after starving to death.

Liang Ziqiang's heart sank, he felt that the first time he placed the large floating gill net, it was a bit of a failure, the catch seemed a bit hopeless. But there was nothing they could do, because of the hot weather for so many consecutive days, they did not dare to come to Longjuling to get the net.

Looking closer, Liang Ziqiang exclaimed, and found that these floating dead fish seemed to have wounds to varying degrees. There were even some broken fish remains a little further away.

He couldn't figure out whether it was eaten by other fish after it floated up or what, so he had to get the net first.

The boat was driven to the cliff of the small island on the left. People got off the boat and began to untie the thick ropes tied to the stone pillars at the bottom of the wall.

Pulling the line of the floating thorn net, Liang Ziqiang and Zhu Tianpeng got back on the boat. Starting from this end, they pulled the floating thorn net onto the boat one section at a time. Li Liang and Deng Zhaocai also drove their boats closer and lent a hand, helping to pull the line and pull the net.

The first feeling is that it is strangely heavy. Logically, there should be quite a lot of fish, but whether they are dead or alive is another matter.

As the top section of the floating thorn net was pulled onto the boat, Liang Ziqiang's eyes flashed and his expression became surprised.

This section of the net, from top to bottom, was full of fish of all sizes and species, and there were indeed quite a few of them. Unexpectedly, after the fish were pulled out of the water, they began to move, causing the entire section of the net to tremble.

At least this shows that most of the fish still have the strength to move, which means they are still alive.

Looking more closely, there were not even one or two dead fish! Almost all the fish that were caught were still hanging on the net and were not dead!
This means that the fish have no problem hanging here for four days. This is strange, and I don't know where the large number of dead fish floating on the sea surface came from?

"Brother Qiang, are these fish okay? And there seem to be so many varieties, I can't even count them all!" Deng Zhaocai was also surprised and spoke up.

"It's just a short clip now, you'll know when you watch it again!"

After all, the entire net is more than 60 meters long, and only two or three meters have been pulled up now.

From time to time they would start the boat, move forward a few meters along the net line, and then pull up a few meters of new floating gillnet.

Deng Zhaocai was right. The fish and shrimp caught were of many varieties, and it was quite a dizzying array.

After all, more than four days had passed, and it was the peak of the spring flood season. Different fish and shrimp species came one after another, passing by like a revolving lantern day and night, so naturally there were more species caught in the nets.

At a glance, there are quite a few golden pomfret.

This is related to the body shape of the golden pomfret. It is relatively wide and a bit diamond-shaped, and its upper and lower fins are long and protruding, so the fins are too easy to get caught in the mesh.

There were also some silver pomfret, but the number was much less than that of golden pomfret. The body structure of silver pomfret is similar, but its habits are different. It likes to swim to the lower layer of the water. The floating gill net this time mainly intercepted the middle and upper layers. The silver pomfret probably passed directly through the space under the net.

There were some small yellow croakers, large yellow croakers, and toothfish. There were not many toothfish, and they were not caught in the mesh, but entangled in the net.

In addition to the golden pomfret, there are also a lot of bluefin bream, goby, and thornfish. Liang Ziqiang is a little overwhelmed by these fish, which take up so much space in the net, but can't be sold at a high price. Especially the thornfish, which is only five cents per pound, it seems that they are just here to make trouble...

This is also one of the disadvantages of floating gillnets. You cannot artificially choose which fish season to catch. You just catch whatever comes.

Continuing to pull up the net, what occasionally catches the eye is that relatively valuable fish such as the bigeye mullet and black bass are also hanging sparsely on the net, which is the finishing touch.

Of course, it's not just fish that get caught. There are several types of shrimp, mostly white shrimp, but there are also mantis shrimp, prawns, and slippery shrimp.

Unlike fish, shrimps don’t have fins. They are not caught, but some unlucky shrimps have their heads caught in one mesh and their tails caught in another mesh, and they get stuck...

There were also some swimming crabs whose claws were stuck in the mesh and could not be pulled out.

There were actually two or three squids. He couldn't understand how these creatures managed to entangle their tentacles and webs together and twist them into a ball.

In short, there were all kinds of creatures hanging on the big net. If we only talk about the number and type, it was definitely a bumper harvest. Compared with his usual wave after wave of nets to catch a single type of fish, this floating gillnet was like a giant curtain, and the various fish caught on it looked simply too spectacular...

Burst

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(End of this chapter)