1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 280: Self-invented trick, alternative longline fishing
They went to the area where the yellow pheasants gathered last time again. After waiting for an hour or so, as expected, there was basically no fish caught this time.

After confirmation, they left decisively and continued to look for new waters.

They tried two more places, but the results were not good. It was not until around noon that they stopped temporarily in a relatively calm area where the currents were almost undetectable and began to cook lunch.

Liang Ziqiang had bought a batch of coal briquettes a few days ago, and now there are new briquettes available on the boat.

In addition to washing rice and cooking, I picked out a white carp and a black carp from the miscellaneous fish harvested in the morning as side dishes, and also blanched the lettuce brought from home before eating.

After a busy day and a meal, an hour or so passed. Liang Ziqiang habitually pulled up a fishing line to check the situation.

The hooks on the upper layer were all empty, so he didn't hold out much hope. But when he pulled to the hook on the bottom layer, he was somewhat surprised.

There were fish on two or three of the bottom hooks, very flat, long and oval, and light brown in color.

"I didn't expect there are fish under the water. They're yellowtail flounder!" Liang Ziqiang reminded others.

"It wasn't too long since we just had a meal. Let's wait a little longer and maybe we'll catch more fish!" Liang's father suggested.

After waiting for another hour or so, it was already afternoon and the six of them began to get busy with their fishing.

Sure enough, this time when we pulled it up, there were four or five fish on almost every fishing line.

There are more types of fish, including yellowtail flounder, high-eye flounder, and oil flounder with a small mouth.

In addition to several different species of flounder, there is also the rather awkward-looking horse-faced pufferfish.

"They are all bottom fish!" said Li Liang.

The commonality of the fish caught this time is obvious. Regardless of whether they are several different types of flounder or skinned fish, they all like to live on the seabed in terms of habits.

"Use all the spare sinkers on the boat and add sinkers to the fishing lines!" Liang's father suggested to them loudly.

This is natural.

Longline fishing has a feature that its up and down position can actually be adjusted.

By temporarily adding some floats to the floating rope on the water surface, the entire longline fishing can be pulled higher, mainly targeting mid- and upper-layer fish.

On the contrary, temporarily adding some sinkers to the bottom of the fishing line can make the fishing line fall more sharply through the weight of the sinkers, and fall directly to the bottom of the sea.

Now that they have discovered that the waters are full of bottom-dwelling fish, the decision has naturally been made to add sinkers to the longline.

After removing all the hooks, some sinkers were added to the fishing line and then put back into the water.

About two hours later, the fish catch continued to increase and even surpassed the first wave!
For each fishing line, except for the upper and middle layers which have empty hooks, all the iron hooks on the bottom layer are empty, with at least four or five hooks and sometimes seven or eight hooks.

Unfortunately, they discovered this area a little late today, only at noon. After two rounds of fishing, it was getting late and they had to return.

These fish are not expensive. Yellowtail flounder is the cheapest among flounders, only 1.5 yuan. Flathead flounder and smallmouth flounder are better, but they are only 3 yuan.

Needless to say, the skinned fish is only worth seven points.

But the quantity is too large! After just two waves of fishing, the various types of flatfish, which are not particularly large, weigh about 170 kilograms, and the large skinned fish weigh more than 220 kilograms. In total, the total catch is nearly 400 kilograms.

The yellowtail flounder, flathead flounder, and oil flounder together brought in more than 40 yuan. The skinned fish sold for more than 15 yuan, and with the miscellaneous fish caught with the net, the total profit was about 60 yuan.

“We didn’t have enough fishing today. Let’s go again tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. We’ll definitely catch more than today!” Li Liang suggested to the other two boats.

"Dad, Liangzi, you guys should sail there early tomorrow morning. I may have to go to the county town, so I won't be able to go out to sea tomorrow. Apeng, you don't have to come tomorrow!" Liang Ziqiang told the others.

"Do you have some urgent business to go to the county town for? We have just discovered a place with flounder with great difficulty. Why don't you go fishing for a few days first and then go to do your business?" asked Liang's father.

Although the income has long been divided among the family, he still hopes that his second son can earn more while there are fish. "I just want to catch more fish before they leave. Tomorrow I will go to the county town to buy a few hundred more hooks and a batch of materials, and do more longline fishing!"

"Do longline fishing again?" Liang's father wondered if he had heard wrongly. "Your boat is so small, and you've put 1,200 hooks on it. I'm afraid that's the limit. Where are you going to put more hooks?"

"Dad, I have an idea. I don't know if it will work, but I want to give it a try!"

Liang Ziqiang felt that it was not clear enough to explain it verbally, so he had to try to do it, and then they would know it.

The next day, Liang Ziqiang did not go out to sea, but went directly to the store in the county town where he bought materials last time. In order not to waste time this time, he finally decided to buy ready-made longline fishing rods directly.

This longline fishing set has 500 iron hooks, plus floating ropes, main lines, floats, and sinkers, which costs dozens more.

After asking around, he bought more than ten large oil drums at a low price, each of which was as big as several empty barrels.

After shipping the oil back home by boat, he immediately got busy tying up a dozen large oil drums together tightly with ropes and wires.

A simple "raft" was made.

When he went out to sea for the second time and arrived at the flounder area the day before, Liang Ziqiang first fixed the newly bought longline fishing set on the "oil drum raft", and then put it together with the oil drum raft onto the sea.

The oil barrel raft and his lotus-patterned boat were connected by two very thick ropes.

As the fishing boat started moving, the oil barrel raft drifted farther and farther, and it looked like another small fishing boat floating on the sea.

In this way, Liang Ziqiang was clearly driving a boat out to sea, but when it came time to fish, it split into two "boats"!

On the side, Liang's father, Liang Tiancheng, and Li Liang were all stunned and speechless for a long time. How could it be operated like this?
"A Qiang, how can you catch fish if you mess around like this? No one has ever done this before!" After a long time, the eldest brother Liang Tiancheng finally uttered something.

"No one has done it before, so I'll give it a try today!" Liang Ziqiang didn't care. "The fishing method left by our ancestors, let's change it a little and come up with a new trick, isn't it great?"

Father Liang was also shocked. He looked at the oil barrel drifting farther and farther away and thought:
“It’s not impossible to fish like this!”

Whether it is a good idea or just a stupid one, we will have to wait and see the actual results to know.

Next, Liang Ziqiang collected the 1,200 or so hooks on the side of the boat every two hours or so.

As for the five hundred hooks on the oil drum raft, he had never been in a hurry to collect them.

The reason is very practical. There are fish being fished on the side of the boat at the same time. If the oil drum raft is pulled closer, it will easily get tangled with the longline fishing line on the side of the boat.

Therefore, they had to wait until the end of the work, when all the fish on the more than 1,000 hooks on the side of the boat had been picked up and put back into the basin, before they could start to collect the 500 hooks on the oil drum raft.

That is to say, with those 500 hooks, you can only collect fish once every day at sea.

But even so, theoretically, it is a huge increase in fish catch.

The fishing boat itself had more than a thousand hooks, which were pulled back every two hours or so. By the afternoon, it had already pulled back the hooks three times in a row. The amount of fish caught in the cabin should have reached about five or six hundred kilograms.

When the work was almost over, more than a thousand hooks on the side of the boat had been cleaned and put back into the basin. Liang Ziqiang began to pull the oil drum raft, which had been soaked in the sea water for a whole day, closer.

Pulling a raft is more difficult than releasing it. He and Zhu Tianpeng worked together and finally pulled the oil barrel raft to the side of the lotus pattern boat.

On the other two boats, Liang's father, Li Liang and others were also watching this side intently, very curious whether this "devious trick" of his could actually catch fish.

“There are fish, there are fish!”

“It seems to be different from the ones beside the boat, or it’s a big fish?!”

As the fishing line under the oil drum raft was pulled out of the water, the people on several boats could no longer remain calm and all shouted out.

(End of this chapter)