1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 298: First Use of Drifting Gillnet
As soon as the boat started the next day, Li Liang and Deng Zhaocai looked over at Liang Ziqiang with a look of surprise. Li Liang couldn't help but ask:
"Why did you bring the floating gill net on board again? It's already this month, how can there be any spring flood?"

Lin Baixian spotted two oystercatchers pacing back and forth on his boat:

"Why are these two birds on the boat? Duobao does have some skills. He can find fish from time to time. What do you want to do with the birds? Catch fish? How useful can those small fish and shrimp be!"

"You'll know after a while," Liang Ziqiang didn't explain too much, "We don't know if it works yet, we have to give it a try!"

They drove to the area where they encountered the cat shark yesterday. At first, the water was empty and they almost lost hope, so they decided to change their minds and go to the narrow island to fish for snappers.

Just as they were getting closer to the snapper, something happened to their delight: the cat shark appeared again!
It seems that this sparsely populated area is one of the relatively fixed activity areas for cat sharks. Even after Liang Ziqiang and his team's fishing and harassment yesterday, the cat sharks only moved a mile or two away and did not completely leave the entire large area.

"We must catch more today! We don't know where they will move to tomorrow, and we may not be able to find them later!" The eldest brother Liang Tiancheng has already picked up the net and handed it to his father.

Li Liang, Lin Baixian and the others also rolled up their sleeves, ready to take advantage of today's opportunity to make another big effort and catch a few more, preferably aiming to catch a dozen or so!

If you really catch ten, that would be three hundred dollars!

However, Liang Ziqiang did not rush to cast the net, but calmly called Zhu Tianpeng, and the two of them pulled up a large floating thorn net together.

The entire area of ​​water where cat sharks are distributed is still very wide. Liang Ziqiang chose a location far away from the other three boats and lowered one end of the floating gillnet into the water.

Afterwards, the boat continued to sail, with Zhu Tianpeng steering while Liang Ziqiang dropped the net into the water.

It was opened about seventy meters away and the entire gillnet was put into the sea.

Under the action of floats and sinkers, the entire large gill net is like an invisible wall erected in the invisible sea water. This wall is high and long, up to seventy meters!
"Can you really catch cat sharks using a floating gillnet?" asked Zhu Tianpeng.

"It's not a floating razor net, it's a drifting razor net!" Liang Ziqiang corrected.

There is a big difference between floating gillnet and drifting gillnet.

The former is essentially a fixed gillnet, tied at both ends and fixed in one place, waiting for fish to hit it.

The two ends of the drift gillnet are not fixed, just like a moving wall floating in the sea water, drifting in the ocean current. Of course, the drifting speed is also very slow, and if a school of fish hits it during the process, it will also be entangled, or the fins of the fish will be caught in the drift gillnet.

After setting up a drift gillnet, Liang Ziqiang did not stop.

Driving to the other side of the water, he used the same method to set down another gillnet, which was also more than 60 meters long.

Today he deliberately brought two large gillnets on the boat.

One of them was basically new, the one that had not been damaged last time at Longjuling;

The other one was a few days ago when Chen Xiangbei was sitting at home, cutting and mending three tattered nets to piece together a complete old net. Unexpectedly, not long after, the big net that his wife had mended came in handy.

Two large drift nets are placed in different positions in the water, at an angle of almost 90 degrees.

"This method seems to be really effective, right? But I'm afraid Aqiang will have to drive the cat sharks away in a boat, because cat sharks won't crash into the gillnets on their own!"

In the distance, the eldest brother Liang Tiancheng seemed to see Liang Ziqiang's intention and communicated with his father.

"He has a lot of weird ideas. Who knows what he's going to do." Liang's father said as he looked at him from a distance.

Because the distance was too far, Liang Ziqiang was operating on the water in another direction, so he naturally didn't know that his father and elder brother were watching and talking about him.

By this time, he had brought the two oystercatchers to the side of the boat and let them go overboard with a wave of his hand.

"No way, he's going to catch a cat shark?!" At this point, Deng Zhaocai had figured out Liang Ziqiang's complete plan and started discussing it with Li Liang.

In order to use oystercatchers to lure cat sharks, Liang Ziqiang lengthened the two ropes tied to the oystercatchers last night, much longer than usual.

Normally, smaller catsharks prefer to prey on terns, such as oystercatchers, which are relatively larger than terns.

But Liang Ziqiang found that the cat sharks this time were generally larger than those of last year, and some of them were quite large, probably as big as the two last year combined. It is entirely possible that the larger cat sharks are interested in oystercatchers!

The two oystercatchers were more difficult to deal with. Soon after entering the water, they began to sense the presence of cat sharks in the distance, so they kept hovering in the relatively safe water surface and would never approach the cat sharks.

Liang Ziqiang drove the boat and tried to drive them away twice, but the oystercatchers still seemed reluctant.

I had no choice but to use my trump card.

Release the dog.

Liang Ziqiang shook the dog leash and Duobao jumped into the water.

At most, these catsharks can only pose a threat to oystercatchers. As long as you keep an eye on them and operate them properly, the oystercatchers will not be in too much actual danger.

As for Duobao, the catshark posed no threat to him at all.

This time, Duobao accurately understood Liang Ziqiang's actual intention. After entering the water, he did not rush to play or swim, but chased after the two oystercatchers, as if he wanted to catch up and bite them.

Perhaps in Duobao's eyes, this itself is a form of entertainment.

At first the oystercatchers thought Duobao was faking a trick and was just joking, until Duobao really pounced on them with his teeth bared. The two oystercatchers screamed and cursed and had to swim forward.

Looking ahead, there are the group of cat sharks.

This is really like having a tiger in front and pursuers behind...

As they got closer to the catsharks, the two oystercatchers finally succeeded in attracting the attention of the catsharks.

Several large cat sharks began to change direction and moved slowly and strategically towards the oystercatchers.

It is still well versed in the art of forbearance, keeping a low profile, disguising itself as a reef slightly above the water, hoping that an oystercatcher will accidentally land on it and then open its mouth to bite it.

The strategy was quite clever, but from the perspective of Liang Ziqiang and his team, they saw more and more "reefs" on the surface of the water, gradually reaching more than a dozen or twenty.

More than twenty small "reefs" are moving forward on the sea by themselves. How magical!
This is not the so-called hiding one's strength and biding one's time, it's completely an ambush from all sides, full of murderous intent!

No matter how cunning cat sharks are, their intelligence is only demonstrated when they are individually trapping seabirds, but after all, they do not have strong collective communication and coordination capabilities.

So many cat sharks simultaneously set their sights on the two oystercatchers and were ready to take action. This was not cunning at all. They simply treated the oystercatchers as blind!
The oystercatcher instinctively felt threatened and turned around again.

Although there is a cat shark in front and Duobao behind, experience tells them that the cat shark seems to be more terrifying, and Duobao is probably a cowardly creature in most cases!
The fear of the cat shark overcame the fear of Duobao. They swam towards Duobao and swam back decisively, almost running away.

As for why they didn't fly, it was because Liang Ziqiang accurately controlled the length of the rope. As soon as they flapped their wings and tried to fly, Liang Ziqiang would quickly pull them back to the water surface.

Besides, after nearly half a year of domestication, they have almost forgotten that they have wings...

At this time, Liang Ziqiang appropriately tightened the dog leash in his hand and pulled Duobao back.

Duobao successfully drove the oystercatcher to the edge of the catshark and attracted the catshark's attention. The mission was accomplished and he could retire.

After Duobao was pulled back, the oystercatcher had no more worries and continued to swim back.

Behind the oystercatcher, the larger catsharks were not willing to let their prey slip away, and they didn't even bother to camouflage themselves. They began to speed up and chase after it from behind.

The big cat shark attracted a lot of small cat sharks, and a group of cat sharks chased the oystercatchers on the water, getting closer and closer to the prey.

Of course, they were getting closer and closer to the "invisible wall" in the water that was opened for them...

(End of this chapter)