1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 296 Caesarean Section

The afternoon's fishing catch was still mainly red snapper, but after fishing for a while, Liang Ziqiang suddenly pulled up a very different fish.

This fish had three oblique stripes on its body. The moment it was taken out of the water, Liang Ziqiang's eyes lit up subconsciously, thinking it was a "three-knife cutter"!
Sure enough, Deng Zhaocai next to him started shouting like a live commentator:
"Brother Qiang, fuck! This can't be San Dao, isn't it? Isn't it the snapper? How come San Dao got mixed up in there?"

"It's good enough if it's three cuts!" Liang Ziqiang took the fish off and glanced at Deng Zhaocai, "This is a river snapper!"

"Indeed, but the river snapper is also very expensive, better than the fish mentioned above!" Liang's father affirmed.

The three diagonal stripes on the fish's body form the Chinese character "川", hence its name. It is also the "川" pattern that makes it somewhat similar to the three-toned swordfish.

The number of river snappers is relatively rare, and ancient people believed that this fish was "once in a thousand years". Therefore, the river snapper has a very cool name:

Millennium snapper.

What’s even more gratifying is that the Millennium Snapper is not only relatively rare and valuable, but also relatively large in size, making it one of the larger snappers.

For example, the one Liang Ziqiang just caught weighs about 7 or 8 kilograms, which is bigger than the red snapper and four-line snapper caught earlier.

The value of this thousand-year-old snapper is worth looking forward to.

Of course, people always have to have hope. Liang Ziqiang’s biggest hope at the moment is to catch the star snapper, also known as the stone clam.

The price of that top-grade snapper is so high that even the thousand-year-old snapper cannot afford it.

By the time the sun was setting, Liang Ziqiang and his friends had each caught several buckets of snappers. The only one who got nothing was Deng Zhaocai.

At first, Deng Zhaocai hoped that the old man would be done with it and would drive the boat away after wandering around for a while. But, until they were ready to leave, Old Xie was still busy driving the boat around on the sea.

Deng Zhaocai's wish to wait until Lao Xie left to go fishing a few more times was completely dashed.

Old Xie was too strict. He told Deng Zhaocai not to go fishing, and Deng Zhaocai didn't catch a single fish.

Finally, Liang's father and the others said goodbye to Lao Xie and officially prepared to sail away.

Having gained so much, now it is Liang Ziqiang and the others' turn to thank Old Xie.

Old Xie interrupted their thanks directly:

"What are you talking about? My life is not worth this little fish, old man? Remember this place, right? If you remember, I won't take you there next time. Come here whenever you want to fish, and take all the fish!"

From what Old Xie said, it seemed as if he was afraid that they wouldn't hook him thoroughly, because then the favor he owed him wouldn't be considered fully repaid.

When they sailed back, everyone was in high spirits. Even Duobao was inexplicably infected by them and wagged his tail as if he was triumphantly returning.

Of course, there are also depressed people, such as Deng Zhaocai.

Although snappers are valuable, they are still not considered high-end seafood, except for stone clams. Therefore, they did not rush to the city, but sold them at the purchasing point in the village.

The most valuable item was Liang Ziqiang's thousand-year-old snapper, which cost two yuan per pound and weighed more than eight pounds. This one cost more than seventeen yuan.

The most abundant fish was red snapper. He caught dozens of them, each weighing about three or four pounds. He sold them for about 180 yuan at 80 cents a pound.
Including the purple snapper and four-line snapper, Liang Ziqiang's harvest today reached more than 240 pieces!
This is without using any tools like fishing nets or longlines. It is quite good to achieve this income just by using fishing rods.

Because of the wind in the next two days, Liang Ziqiang and his friends were forced to stop going out to sea and stay at home for two days.

To be honest, the weather has been mostly sunny throughout May, and it is quite rare to have windy and rainy weather. This time, it was windy and wavy, so I took it as a rare day of rest.

Two days later, the weather turned fine and they prepared to go out to sea, but they found out that Lin Baixian was unable to come because of something at home.

The remaining three boats, Liangfu, Liang Ziqiang and Li Liang, took their nets and fishing rods and continued to go out to sea.

The goal was clear, of course, to go straight to the narrow island that Lao Xie had mentioned to fish for snappers. But along the way, they still released some longline fishing.

If you can catch some fish on the way, that would be even better, since it won’t delay anything.

When the boat was still a long way from the snapper island, Liang's father tried to lift the longline fishing line up to take a look. He didn't have much hope at first, but when he saw it, he was pleasantly surprised.

"We encountered a sea catfish. Do you want to stop and fish for a while?" Liang's father looked at Liang Ziqiang and asked.

"Sea catfish?" Liang Ziqiang had a flash of thought.

He quickly pulled up his longline to check and found that there were not only sea catfish, but also quite a few iron hooks on the bottom, probably four or five on each fishing line!

In terms of price, sea catfish, which cost a few cents, cannot be compared with snapper, which costs as little as 80 cents and as much as one dollar and fifty cents or two dollars.

However, Liang Ziqiang thought of the special features of sea catfish -

Can be used to catch lampreys!

A few days ago, they wanted to catch a big fish in the sea, and then use the big fish to catch lampreys. However, they didn't catch the big fish, but accidentally rescued Lao Xie, so the plan to go out to sea was temporarily changed.

Now, although these sea catfishes are not huge fish, they are one of the fish that lampreys are more interested in!

"Dad, let's not go fishing for snappers today. Let's fish for sea catfish here. After fishing for sea catfish, we'll go to the small trench to catch lampreys!" Liang Ziqiang decided immediately.

"Not going to fish for snappers? A snapper you catch could sell for a lot of money!" Liang Tiancheng was obviously reluctant to give up the snappers on the island.

"No matter how valuable the snapper is, it can't compare to the lamprey!" Liang's father figured out the account in an instant. "Besides, the snapper won't run away from where it hides, and I don't think Old Xie is the kind of person who would tell everyone about it. Let's catch the snapper after we finish catching the lamprey, so we can keep things simple!"

It is true. You can fish for snappers every day, but you can't always catch big fish or sea catfish.

Since we encountered sea catfish today, of course the priority is to fish for lampreys.

Several boats slowed down on the water, and after about an hour, they pulled up the fishing lines again to check.

Sure enough, the iron hooks on the bottom caught more fish. Liang Ziqiang pulled several fishing lines and found that there were basically more than seven or eight fish, and some fishing lines had more than a dozen sea catfish.

Seeing that it was almost time, we decided to move immediately.

Li Liang and Liang Ziqiang were in front, and Liang's father's boat was behind, heading straight for Xiaohaigou.

The small trench is different from the island. It is not easy to identify it at a glance. Fortunately, before leaving that day, Liang Ziqiang threw a seabed map into the small trench.

It is not for catching fish with the seabed hook, but using the buoy above the seabed hook is equivalent to making a mark on the water surface.

If you sink into a small trench on the seabed, you basically don't have to worry about being carried away by the ocean currents.

At this time, Liang Ziqiang searched all the way, scanned the sea for a while, and finally found the buoy.

"Here, the trench is right below!" he affirmed.

As he said this, he pulled up the fish from the seabed. When he saw it, a bitter smile suddenly appeared on his face.

What kind of underwater diving is this?!
I saw that the entire seabed was empty, and no fish or shrimp were caught. Instead, the net bag on the seabed was full of holes!
"I'm afraid this was eaten by a lamprey?" Liang's father saw it at a glance.

"Of course, no other fish will do this except lampreys!" Liang Ziqiang shook his head. The net that was crawling on the seabed was considered scrapped.

Fish like the plum fish, dragon fish, shrimps and crabs are trapped and unable to get out after falling into the trap set up by the seabed divers. Only these lampreys cannot be trapped by the seabed divers.

It is easy to imagine the scene where, after the lampreys fell into the trap and found they could not escape, they simply used the dozens of files in their mouths to cut the net into pieces.

It didn't matter, Liang Ziqiang didn't expect to catch lampreys by seabed diving. After determining the location of the small trench, Li Liang, Liang Ziqiang, and Liang's father lined up along the water surface above the trench and began to use the sea catfish hanging on the longline hook to catch lampreys.

Although the sea catfish were not as big as the one that weighed over 100 kilograms last time, there were more than 100 to 200 sea catfish hanging under each of their boats.

It is impossible to accurately estimate how many lampreys this amount can attract, but it is believed that it will not be too far off...

After waiting for about two hours, several people began to try to fish.

As soon as he pulled the bottom hook, Liang Ziqiang's scalp felt numb again.

Originally, the catfish were all naked, but after two hours, at least half of them were now covered with lampreys.

This also proves that even though we used a water tiger to fish once last time, there are still a lot of lampreys in the small trench!

Liang Ziqiang pulled a few more fishing lines, carefully observed the situation of the sea catfish, and suggested:

"Let's not rush back. We can put the fishing line down and continue fishing. If we wait another two hours, we may find more lampreys!"

He discovered that some of the catfish had not been attracted. Moreover, even for those catfish that had been attracted, it should not be a problem to attract one or two more lampreys.

We finally managed to get a big fish that could attract lampreys, so of course we had to make the most of it.

After listening to Liang Ziqiang's words, Liang's father and Li Liang also observed several fishing lines in succession, and finally put them back into the sea and decided to continue waiting.

There was nothing to do while waiting, so Liang's father took out his bamboo tube and took two big puffs.

Liang Tiancheng probably thought about his recent harvest and became happier and happier. He said to Liang Ziqiang:
"Aqiang, you've been very lucky recently! These past few days, someone either gave me a snapper or found a nest of lampreys. I got some of that luck and made a lot of money!"

"Brother, the snapper was saved because we met Lao Xie. It's not just me who saved him. Didn't you all rush over to save him?" Liang Ziqiang felt that this was a typical case of returning a favor and it had little to do with good luck.

"If I don't have that kind of luck, even if I save someone, people may not be willing to reward me handsomely!" Li Liang also felt that luck was ultimately a factor in it.

As they were talking, Liang Ziqiang heard Duobao's strange cry from behind him. It was high and low, and the cry was very chaotic.

Liang Ziqiang was very puzzled. When he picked up a sea catfish filled with lampreys from the water, that scene didn't scare Duobao, who was a veteran and used to it. So what was so strange about this scene that could make him so surprised?
Instinctively, Liang Ziqiang's first reaction was to think of the smell of gunpowder.

Did the faint smell of gunpowder in the sea breeze catch Duobao's attention again? Last time, Liang Ziqiang and his men didn't feel anything, but Duobao, with his keen sense of smell for gunpowder, barked and led them to a large group of floating fish.

Liang Ziqiang, who was originally sitting at the bow, stood up and walked towards Duobao's position in the cabin.

When he got there, he stood still in the cabin.

Duobao's strange noises were not a big deal, but when he looked at the sea lion, Liang Ziqiang was really surprised.

A small, wet head was slowly emerging from under the fur seal's abdomen!
To be honest, Liang Ziqiang had become accustomed to the pregnant dog during this period. He thought that there was a female sea lion with a round belly just sitting there on the boat, and sometimes he would automatically ignore it.

Anyway, the female sea lion, who was not very noisy and active, lost its presence after staying on the boat for a long time. Only when it flapped its clumsy front fins and crawled to look a little cute, Liang Ziqiang and Zhu Tianpeng would take a few more glances and throw a few small fish to it.

Subconsciously, Liang Ziqiang thought that the female sea lion's belly would continue to grow bigger, and he never thought that she would give birth so soon!
There is another reason for this. The gestation period of sea lions is longer than that of humans, and they give birth to one baby in a year. Perhaps for this reason, Liang Ziqiang also felt that it would take a long time for sea lions to give birth.

Unexpectedly, without any signs, the baby dog ​​was born just like that?

Seeing this, Zhu Tianpeng hurried over and stood in the cabin to watch.

Part of Gou Wa's head came out and seemed to stop for a moment, but his body did not fall out immediately.

The sea lion seemed to be holding back its strength and making a unique low growl.

Unfortunately, its growl was soon drowned out. Because, seeing a live dog brain coming out of a sea lion's stomach, Duobao, the silly dog, probably couldn't understand this magical scene for a while, and was puzzled.

Duobao's way of expressing confusion is to stick his neck out and scream as loudly as possible!
So in comparison, Duobao seemed both excited and silly, while the pregnant woman herself seemed much calmer...

In this way, Liang Ziqiang, Zhu Tianpeng and Duobao, three men, surrounded a woman in labor and watched the entire process of childbirth with their eyes fixed on her.

At first, Duobao probably couldn't figure out what kind of monster the little head coming out of the belly was. He shouted for a long time, and it seemed that the shouting successfully calmed his emotions, and he began to poke his head over.

Smell the little head that has not yet been fully born!

I don’t know what it smelled. Perhaps it identified through its sense of smell that this was a normal creature of the same type as the sea lion?

Anyway, after sniffing, Duobao began to stretch out his claws and scratched the part of the puppy's head that came out twice.

Liang Ziqiang and Zhu Tianpeng looked at each other.

Duobao wants to help the sea lion and dig the baby out?

The legendary “Cesarean section”?
"Will it take a long time to come out? Do you want us to pull it out with our hands?"

As he watched, Zhu Tianpeng was actually infected by Duobao's thinking.

"No need?" Liang Ziqiang shook his head. "It normally takes some time to give birth, right? It hasn't been long yet."

Sure enough, after watching for less than a minute, the little sea lion slipped out of a slide and its whole body fell out.

When the little thing was born, it was covered with gray-black fur, a round head, and a round body, which, when put together, looked like a gourd.

However, his eyes were not fully opened and his body was limp.

At this moment, Duobao was digging with his claws when he saw a whole little thing falling down along his claws.

Duobao thought that it was thanks to his claws that he successfully dug out the baby sea lion, and he was immediately very proud. When he woke up again, he wagged his head and tail, full of a sense of accomplishment.

The big sea lion stopped growling and instead stretched its head and tried to touch the little sea lion with its nose and mouth.

In the morning, the sun slanted into the cabin from outside, shining on the fur of the big sea lion. The way it lowered its head to nudge the little sea lion looked like it was kissing it.

However, the little sea lion crawling on the ground could not tell the direction or gender, and it just happened to fall under Duobao's body and kept drilling under Duobao's crotch.

The soft flipper-like forelimbs touched Duobao's claws, and it went up the pole, and simply pounced on Duobao's legs, holding his thighs firmly...

Duobao was wagging his tail, but when he was hugged like this, he suddenly froze and stood there with an indescribable feeling of confusion.

The confusion of having a baby...

"Haha, Duobao is still so young, and he has already become a father without even knowing what's going on. How unfair it is for him to be a father!"

Zhu Tianpeng looked at the situation. He was usually a very kind person, but now every tone of his smile was full of dishonesty...

Duobao looked down at the little black ball-like thing and wanted to pull his legs away to run away, but he didn't do it in the end. He was just held nervously like that.

Liang Ziqiang looked at it, and a word from later generations suddenly popped up in his mind.

How to say Duobao.

I love being a father!

(End of this chapter)