1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 255: Starting a New Way to Go to Sea

"Golden thread fish? Where did the golden thread fish come from, and there are so many of them!"

Zhu Tianpeng obviously also recognized the golden thread fish and immediately muttered in surprise.

The two of them worked together to pour the fish onto the deck. There were indeed some eyeglass fish in the net, probably the dozen or so we saw standing on the boat, but there were at least dozens of golden thread fish, much more than the eyeglass fish.

The silvery-white eyeglass fish was wrapped in a pile of golden thread fish.

In the sight, there is a large area of ​​bright red and pink, mixed with some silver.

The dorsal fins of these golden thread fish have the brightest red, almost appearing rose red. As it transitions to the abdomen, the red turns pink and lighter, and running through the light red is a thin golden line.

The reason why it is called "golden thread fish" is probably because of this line.

"Great news! Golden thread fish must be much more valuable than eyeglass fish!" The eldest brother Liang Tiancheng was obviously surprised to catch so many golden thread fish, and he was shouting.

Of course, good things are good things, everyone knows that. The key is that this feeling is both joyful and strange. In the blink of an eye, so many golden thread fish appeared out of nowhere.

"Brother, hurry up and cast the net! Let's ignore those eyeglass fish on the water. Just throw the net into the water. There are a lot of golden thread fish in the deep water that you can't see!"

Liang Ziqiang didn't stop, and this time he didn't look for where the eyeglass fish gathered, but just threw the net into the water. While throwing, he reminded his father.

Obviously, the large number of golden threadfish they caught had nothing to do with the eyeglass fish they saw on the water surface.

Cobra fish like to float on the upper layer of water, so if you encounter one while the boat is cruising, you can immediately observe it with your eyes.

The golden threadfish is different. It is a bottom-layer fish in the sea, active in the lower part of the sea water close to the mud and sand. When it goes out to sea, it is almost impossible to observe its traces with just the naked eye.

When you go out to sea and cast your net, you will catch gobies, saury, bluefin bream, golden pomfret, sea bass, etc. Most of them are top layer fish that tend to float on the surface of the sea. These fish are easy to be observed by scanning the surface of the sea with your eyes.

There are still many fish in the middle and lower layers of the sea, and even if they are swimming in groups, fishermen are often unaware of them.

Therefore, casting a net is the simplest and most convenient but also the most limited method, and it is easy to miss the fish layer under your feet.

This is one of the reasons why everyone wants to save money to buy a trawler. A trawler can catch fish from above, in the middle, below, and even on the bottom of the water, visible or invisible.

Just like just now, if they hadn't happened to see the floating eyeglass fish on the water surface and cast a net, they would have had no idea that there were golden threadfish in the shallow sea under their feet, and would have just carelessly driven the boat past them.

Since the golden threadfish swam in invisible places and they could not see through, they had no way of knowing where there were more or fewer fish under their feet. Liang Ziqiang decided that they could only cast the net randomly and catch fish randomly.

Accuracy is indeed a mystery, but there is one advantage: you can act quickly and throw it wherever you want. If you throw it wrong, you can just pick it up and throw it somewhere else.

Fortunately, Liang Ziqiang's second try was correct.

The fishing net was thrown out blindly in a seemingly empty area of ​​water and kept sinking. It was not until it was almost at the bottom that it was pulled up.

There is only one eyeglass fish in this net, and there are dozens of others, all of which are golden threadfin mullets that are red with gold and extremely eye-catching!
"How is it over there?" Liang Ziqiang asked at the top of his voice.

"I got nothing here, I didn't hit the right one!" Liang Tiancheng replied somewhat frustratedly.

"Hurry up and try somewhere else, there must be more underneath!"

After Liang Ziqiang replied, he cast the net again near the place where he had just been.

Since there was no need to deliberately drive the boat to chase the fish on the water surface, Zhu Tianpeng did not have to stay in the cabin to control the direction. He ran out and picked up another net and cast the net together.

Liang's father and Liang Tiancheng knew that there were no fish in the water just now, so they started to move and continued to scatter the fish in another place.

After waiting for a while, Liang Ziqiang pulled up the net and found that there was still a harvest, and it was still mainly golden threadfish, but the number was obviously less than the previous one.

After a while, Zhu Tianpeng also pulled up the net, but his catch was less than his.

"How is it over there?" Liang Ziqiang asked again.

"I'm collecting them! Wait, there are not many gold threads, but there are quite a few silver pomfret?!" Liang Tiancheng's voice.

"Yes, there are also silver pomfret underwater!" Liang's father also replied.

Like the golden threadfish, the silver pomfret is inconspicuous and swims silently underwater.

Unexpectedly, at this moment, there are many schools of golden threadfish and silver pomfret swimming through this area of ​​water at the same time!
The price of silver pomfret has always been high, and it is a valuable catch along with golden threadfish.

However, when Liang Ziqiang and Zhu Tianpeng continued to collect their nets, they gained almost nothing this time, and they ended up catching nothing.

The fish were swimming past here, so their position must be constantly changing. Unfortunately, he couldn't observe with his eyes, so Liang Ziqiang had to estimate the general direction of the fish, adjust the boat, and continue casting the net in another place.

This time there was another catch, but the content was a little different.

There was red and silver in the net, it turned out to be half golden thread fish and half silver pomfret. The bright silver and bright red looked very pretty.

This means that golden threadfish and silver pomfret must have swam past this location just now.

He continued to estimate and then continued to throw blindly.

This time, I waited a while before pulling the net back up, and it was a completely different picture. There were dozens of silver pomfret in the net.

I continued casting in the same place, but as the fish swam, the catch became less and less, and gradually the net became empty again.

In this way, Liang Ziqiang drove the boat, constantly changing locations, like guerrilla warfare, throwing the boat here and there at random.

But later on, no matter how he changed places, he no longer gained anything.

Occasionally, a few crabs and shrimps are caught, and the net is basically empty.

It was obvious that we couldn't continue blindly fishing this group of underwater fish, and it took a lot of time to cast the net like this.

After discussing it, the father and son immediately stopped casting the net and drove the boat back to the village.

"Dad, we usually rely on casting nets when we go out to sea, but we still miss a lot of fish!" Liang Ziqiang said loudly on the way.

"What can we do about it? Who can see the fish underwater? You can use a fishing rod to fish, and you can catch some fish, whether they are in the upper or lower layers. But the speed of the fishing rod is so fast, how many dozens of kilograms can you catch if you stay on the boat all day?" Liang's father replied.

Fishing with a fishing rod is not an option. It is much better to search the sea surface with the naked eye and simply cast a net to catch fish one by one.

"Or you can save more money and buy a big trawler that can even trawler those underwater!" Liang's father had already smoked a bamboo tube and exhaled a puff of smoke.

"What else can we do if we can buy a trawler that costs thousands of dollars and head straight to the deep sea border!" Liang Ziqiang continued, "But with the boats we have now, we can still find other ways, right? Longline fishing can catch fish from both the upper and lower layers at the same time. Why don't we try some longline fishing someday?"

As far as I can remember, when I was a kid, I went out to sea with my father for many years, but I almost never tried longline fishing, and there were very few fishermen in my village who did longline fishing. There must be a reason for this.

But as far as Liang Ziqiang knows, longline fishing has its own advantages over casting nets.

"You mean longline fishing? Our boat was too small to pull many lines before! Now we have these two new boats, we can give it a try, especially yours!

But there is one thing, longline fishing is not as simple as you think. The big line is connected with the small line, and there are a lot of hooks on the branch line. Not to mention the cost of buying a set, every time you go out to sea, they will get tangled up. It takes two or three people to sit there and spend an hour or two just to sort them out! If you don’t sort them out, you can’t use them next time! ”

Apparently, what my father said is the reason why longline fishing is not widely used in our village at present.

Moreover, longline fishing is different from casting a net, which relies on blind guessing. It is of course best if there are fish on the bottom of the water. If there are no fish in the lower layer of the entire water area after fishing for half a day, then the whole day is wasted, and you will have to spend two hours to sort out the ropes when you get home.

But Liang Ziqiang was not thinking about these things.

What he thought was that the villagers usually caught fish in the upper layer by casting nets, so the fish in the middle and lower layers were not caught too much.

So far, the middle and lower layer fish resources in the nearby waters are definitely relatively abundant, better than the current situation of upper layer fish.

Although longline fishing is a bit of a blind guess, it is still worth a try. Who knows, you may make more money from blind guessing than from casting a net.

Back at the shore, the king rock bream with the long black hair on its tail was naturally taken out separately, ready to be shipped to Yuehai Restaurant next time.

Liang's father and the others did as he said and took out the two valuable ones and sold them separately.

The rest of the catch, including shrimp, was all pushed to the purchasing point on a cart.

Seeing that they brought back so many sea breams, Zheng Liu was no longer surprised this time and immediately became energetic and started to collect the fish for them.

"Are there peach blossom shrimps this time? Come on, weigh the peach blossom shrimps for them first!" Zheng Liu instructed Deng Fei and another helper.

"Wait, can you tell me the price of peach blossom shrimp first?" Liang's father interrupted.

"Old buddy, you still don't trust me? Isn't the smooth shrimp expensive enough? I'll give you the same price as the smooth shrimp, isn't that good enough?" Zheng Liu laughed.

"Forget it, Deng Fei, you weigh the other fish. We definitely won't sell the peach blossom shrimps at the same price of 80 cents as the slippery shrimps. Keep them and ask in a few more villages later. No matter how rare peach blossom shrimps are, there are always people buying them. I don't believe you can't find out the latest price!" Liang's father pretended to move the basket of slippery shrimps aside for Liang Ziqiang.

Zheng Liu was anxious now: "Old buddy, how can you be like this? How much do you want?"

"One dollar!" Liang's father and Liang Ziqiang did not discuss the price, but their asking price was surprisingly the same.

"Okay, okay, I really can't make a penny from you and your sons!" Zheng Liu agreed to the price with a toothache expression on his face.

Liang Ziqiang's peach blossom shrimps were weighed, and the total weight was 78.7 jin. At one yuan per jin, it was a good deal, 78.7 yuan.

This is really an extra gain from today's trip to Niu Shi Island.

Then he called the fish he caught with his net.

The eyeglass fish was only offered for three cents, the same price as the golden pomfret. Liang Ziqiang and his friends didn't need to bargain because the fish tasted just like that after all.

Besides, they didn't catch many eyeglass fish, so they went for the eyeglass fish in the first net, and later their targets turned directly to the two kinds of fish in the deep water.

"The eyeglass fish weighs 13.6 jin, 0.30 jin, and costs 4.08 yuan." Zheng Liu said.

"This is the first time I've seen you bring back golden thread fish today. To be honest, it looks pretty good. I'll give you a price for the silver pomfret. Sixty cents. Stop arguing!"

The golden thread fish costs 60 cents, Liang Ziqiang has no objection.

"Eighty-one pounds and five ounces of golden thread fish, sixty cents, forty-eight dollars and ninety cents!"

"There aren't many silver pomfret, thirty-three pounds, sixty cents, nineteen dollars and eighty cents!"

Today, the unexpected gains on the way home alone added up to more than a hundred.

After weighing these, we then weighed the sea breams caught on Niu Shi Island. This time, the harvest was not as good as the last time. There were too many worthless flat sea breams, followed by black sea breams. There were also cow dung sea breams, yellow legged sea breams, and red snappers, but not many.

There were more than fifty flathead sea breams, weighing more than 39 pounds, at 40 cents per pound, which is just over 15 yuan.

Other sea breams were sold for 60 cents, one dollar, or one dollar and twenty-three dollars, and some were sold for more than twenty-two dollars.

All together, these sea breams were sold for more than thirty-seven dollars, which was much less than the income from the last sea bream.

But including the shrimps, golden threadfish, and silver pomfret I caught on the way, the total amount came to one hundred and eighty-eight dollars and forty-eight cents!
This is far better than the last trip to Cow Shit Island.

Moreover, the most valuable black-tailed sea bream and king rock snapper on the boat have not been counted yet.

Liang's father and Liang Tiancheng also earn more than 100 yuan each. Their income from peach blossom shrimp is not inferior to Liang Ziqiang's. This is one of the biggest sources of income today. However, their income from golden thread fish is not as good as Liang Ziqiang's.

The sea bream that Zhu Tianpeng caught were sold for about thirty yuan and two cents.

Adding the five yuan salary Liang Ziqiang gave him, Zhu Tianpeng’s total income today was thirty-five yuan.

I packed up and went home, and also took home the long-tailed black-haired and fat rock sea bream that I had saved for sale.

After stuffing the money into his wife's hand, Liang Ziqiang didn't stop and went to the shrimp pond with the sandworms.

These are some sandworms that we specially got on the island to feed the shrimps.

First, a small part of the water in the broodstock pond was replaced, then the sandworms were poured into the broodstock pond, and some Artemia were caught and mixed with the water for the broodstock to eat.

Liang's father and Liang Tiancheng also came over to the shrimp pond and fed the shrimps in their own pond.

After finishing my work and returning home for dinner, I found that there was not only food on the table, but also egg dumplings.

Eating egg dumplings in the evening is also a way to celebrate his birthday.

Mother Liang also knew that Father Liang's income today was over a hundred, and she was so happy during dinner that she couldn't stop smiling:

"We really have to thank the God of Wealth. Look at our earnings today. Isn't this more than what you usually catch?"

Father Liang corrected him, "We didn't catch many valuable fish today. These are just some deep-water fish we encountered on the way back..."

"Isn't it the same? Anyway, my fortune is good today!" Liang's mother thought that what she said was absolutely correct.

When he went back to his room to sleep at night, Chen Xiangbei also looked at him and said:

"It's not about the amount of money. You just earned 188 today. Is this really the God of Wealth giving you a good number?"

Seeing his wife talking nonsense with a smile on her face, Liang Ziqiang agreed:

"Well, I think next time when we pray to the God of Wealth, we can use a more auspicious number. Wouldn't 888 be more auspicious?"

"All the good things are up to you!"

There were already 1,800 in the bottom of the box last time, plus the 188 today, it has reached 1,988. My family fortune is almost about to break the 2,000 mark again!

If it continues to be sunny tomorrow, I will not go fishing on Niu Shi Island for the time being. I have to quickly take the black-haired and spotted sea breams that I have temporarily raised in the sea to the city to sell them.

Of course, if it is a cloudy day, you have to seize the safe opportunity to go to Longjuling to collect the floating barbed net that was put out the day before.

As expected, the weather cleared up again the next day, and the temperature was only higher than yesterday.

It was definitely impossible to go to Longjuling, so Liang Ziqiang told his father and brother that he was going to the city to sell valuable fish, and asked them if they wanted to go with him.

Liang's father and Liang Tiancheng said they would continue to wander around the sea, and let Liang Ziqiang take the spotted sea bream and black hair to the city to sell them.

Liang Ziqiang reminded:

"We saw it yesterday. There are a lot of good fish below the surface of the sea that are usually invisible. Are you really not considering longline fishing? If you are considering it, let's go to the city together today to look for it. Should we buy a set of ready-made longline fishing fish or think of some other way?"

"That's true, but you don't have to go to the city to buy longline fishing. I know where to buy it in the county town. When you go to the city to sell the fish, your brother and I will go to the county town to find longline fishing. We will wait for you there. When you come back from selling the fish, stop in the county town and come find us!"

Liang's father told Liang Ziqiang the approximate location of the county where longline fishing might be sold and decided.

Liang Ziqiang thought this was a good idea.

Zhu Tianpeng didn't come today. It was agreed yesterday that if the weather was fine, Liang Ziqiang would go to the city to sell fish. His grouper bream was also kept at Liang Ziqiang's house, so he asked Liang Ziqiang to take them to the city to sell today.

The father and his two sons boarded Liang Ziqiang's boat and set off towards the county town and the city...

The two chapters in one have been sent out. Happy reading, fellow readers!

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(End of this chapter)