1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 264: Catch One Get One Free, Make a Profit

Soon, two more fishing lines were caught by the two of them.

This time, there were not all empty hooks on the upper part of the fishing line.

"Two bass, not bad." Liang Ziqiang took the two fish off the iron hook.

"Flower-body fish? This is a good fish, and the meat is delicious too!" On Zhu Tianpeng's line, a flower-body fish was caught on the upper iron hook.

The flower body fish in Zhu Tianpeng’s mouth is actually the spotted pig fish that Liang Ziqiang had eaten before, also known as the singing woman.

Spotted pigfish can go up and down in the water. Sometimes they are at the bottom and sometimes they swim to the upper layer. It is not surprising that they are caught by iron hooks in the upper layer.

I continued to reel in the line and waited until the iron hook at the lower layer was pulled out of water. Sure enough, the situation was similar to the first fishing line in front, all sea catfish.

About half of the catfish were still firmly sucked by the disgusting thing and were sucking their blood.

There are probably four or five lampreys on the fishing lines in the hands of each of them.

After picking them off, they threw the catfish into a large barrel along with the lampreys, with no intention of saving the catfish from the water.

Actually, it is not always easy to remove the lamprey from the catfish. Sometimes you have to use some strength, and sometimes you still can't remove it, so you have to use cold weapons such as chisels and kitchen knives.

They are busy now and certainly don't have time to do delicate work like using a kitchen knife.

But sometimes things are unexpected.

They didn't try to pull it out, but a lamprey fell off the catfish on its own. It was not known whether it was taking a break after sucking its blood or it was frightened after being pulled onto the boat.

Zhu Tianpeng didn't know what he was thinking, but when he saw the lamprey sliding down and about to fall, he reached out to catch it.

He pinched his hand, but the lamprey's big mouth suddenly opened towards him!

Well, it’s not called opening. This thing doesn’t have a lower jaw, so how can it open its mouth?

Its entire mouth is as round as a pompadour, and it is filled with at least dozens of sharp teeth, which are exposed instinctively.

There are no words to describe that dark shape!

All I can say is that the mouth looks like a nightmare that one can't wake up from.

The shadows in the two people's hearts quickly grew.

But there was no time to have nightmares at this moment. If he hesitated for a moment, Zhu Tianpeng would share the same fate with the sea catfish.

Although he was wearing gloves, if this thing really bit him, it wouldn't be too challenging to bite through the gloves if given some time.

Liang Ziqiang quickly reached out his hand and slapped it hard just below the head, finally crooking its mouth.

"Throw it in the bucket!"

After the filming, he yelled at Zhu Tianpeng.

The latter was probably still stuck in the vortex of nightmare, but after his roar, he finally woke up. He quickly threw the lamprey into the bucket with a flick of his hand.

The lamprey that fell into the bucket was like a baby that had found its mother again. It connected seamlessly to another sea catfish and began sucking all over again.

He sucked it like it was free.

Well, the catfish cost only a few cents, so it really wasn't expensive. So Liang Ziqiang had no intention of stopping it.

Just suck it up, the flesh and blood sucked into the belly of the lamprey will no longer be the flesh and blood of the sea catfish, but the value of the lamprey. At least it will increase dozens of times in an instant!

"Haha, I also caught a few thornfish and whitebait!"

When I continued to reel in the fifth and sixth fishing lines, two or three thorny bass and white carp appeared on several iron hooks in the middle layer.

There are more of these two cheap fish in shallow waters, so it is not surprising to see a few of them biting the hook. Maybe they were wandering around in the middle layer of the seawater at this time, not floating up like usual, so they were not seen from the surface.

This time, Liang Ziqiang was out of character. He was not disappointed by the cheap fish. Instead, he felt that it was just what he wanted. "A Peng, you continue to reel in the fishing line. I'll make a new batch of bait!"

There were still twelve fishing lines and a total of 600 iron hooks on the boat that had not been put into the water. Because there were not enough shrimps in the morning, these hooks remained empty on the boat.

Liang Ziqiang decided to use local materials. He cut all the freshly caught thorny fish and white carp into small pieces with a kitchen knife, and then hung them on the batch of iron hooks, so that he would have fishing lines to release.

But the thorny fish and whitebait were obviously not enough, so Liang Ziqiang had no choice but to take some sea catfish to make up the number.

These sea catfish are quite large, with the larger ones weighing three or four pounds, or even four or five pounds. If one is cut into small pieces, it can be made into a lot of bait.

But Liang Ziqiang had never used catfish meat as bait before, and the effect was completely unknown. It was estimated that the meat would not be very attractive to other fish in the sea.

After every fifty hooks, he connected the new fishing line to the main line in the water. One of the advantages of longline fishing is that it can be increased and extended by itself.

While he was operating the baiting operation, Zhu Tianpeng would tell him every time he caught a few fish.

"Three bluefin breams! They are neither cheap nor expensive. At least they are more expensive than the thorny fish and whitebait we saw earlier. Do you want to use them as bait or put them in a bucket to sell for money?"

There was a green carp hanging on each of the adjacent iron hooks. Zhu Tianpeng turned his head and asked him.

"The green fish can be sold for 1.5 cents now, so forget it and put it in the bucket!"

Liang Ziqiang decided. If I use it as bait and catch a catfish worth a few cents, it will be a bit annoying.

Of course, it would be a different story if every sea catfish had a scary-looking thing attached to it.

Upon hearing this, Zhu Tianpeng took down all the green mullets and put them in the bucket. These green mullets were also quite large.

"Hey, there are several buckets over there, not just this one, don't put it in the bucket with the catfish!"

Liang Ziqiang quickly spoke out to stop him.

There are a lot of lampreys in the bucket of sea catfish. Who knows if the bluefin tuna is thrown in, will the lampreys rush over to suck the bluefin tuna's blood?

The catfish was already rotten, so that was fine. But if the green mullet was broken, it would be really hard to sell.

I heard that this hellish thing called lamprey is mainly interested in trout, sea catfish, salmon, sharks and even whales, but it's hard to say for sure.

Liang Ziqiang is more inclined to believe that this thing will bite any flesh it comes across and suck any blood it finds. As long as the creature weighs a few pounds, it will be able to attach itself to it.

"Ah, does the green zebra fish also suck?" Zhu Tianpeng had never thought about this.

"Have you forgotten that it almost sucked you up like a catfish just now?"

"Okay..." Zhu Tianpeng quickly found another bucket and put the bluefin bream in. In fact, it is better to classify them from the beginning, so as to save the trouble of sorting them after returning to the shore.

Liang Ziqiang installed more than two hundred hooks and threw them into the sea. Then he returned to the side of the boat and continued fishing with Zhu Tianpeng.

The first batch had a total of twelve fishing lines and six hundred hooks.

The two of them collected all twelve fishing lines one after another.

The situation is almost the same. There are not many fish hooked in the upper layer. The occasional few are nothing more than common and cheap fish such as black carp, white carp and blue carp.

But all the lower hooks caught sea catfish.

Judging from what was happening over there with my father, the situation was obviously the same as his.

Before going out to sea, they would never have imagined that their first longline fishing would be like this.

If there were only sea catfish, they would probably cry their eyes out after today’s catch;
Half of the catfish have "added value" loaded on them, so it seems like we made a lot of money today...

Continuous fire.

(I found the lamprey picture yesterday and posted it in Chapter 262, “This Chapter”.)
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(End of this chapter)