1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 398 Attracting a Tide of Grouper
"A Qiang, would Jiang Wenang want this kind of lamprey? It seems to be able to glow at night, and it should be pretty nice to keep!" Liang Chun asked.

They had all sold bicolor strawberry fish and clownfish to Jiang Wen'ang, and knew that he specialized in collecting strange and beautiful fish. So when Liang Chun saw the countless lampreys in front of him, he thought of Jiang Wen'ang.

"Then just catch as much as you can, but don't take too long. It's okay to catch a little fish, but if too much, we won't be able to sell it!" Liang Ziqiang decided.

Some people do like to keep lampreys in fish tanks. At night, it looks like a tank full of fireflies, flickering and quite beautiful.

But the problem is that this thing is too difficult to raise. Often, there is no follow-up after raising it for a while, and it is rare to successfully raise it for a long time. Because of this, those who like to raise fish also give up when they know the difficulty, and not many people are willing to try this.

It should be easy to sell if he gets a little bit, but if he gets too much, Jiang Wenang probably won’t be able to sell it.

After making the decision, start fishing immediately.

There are two fishing nets on board now, but they are rarely used because this kind of trawler is not suitable for casting nets. Casting the net from the high deck by leaning against the iron railing is laborious and difficult to cast accurately.

He asked Zhu Tianpeng to drive the boat, and he and Lu Song each carried a small fishing net. When the boat got closer and closer to the winding and blue "light road" on the sea, they looked at the shimmering water surface and threw the fishing nets.

It was indeed difficult to exert force while leaning against the iron railing, but fortunately there were so many lightfish under the boat that there was no need to cast the net very accurately.

Liang Ziqiang waited for a while, waiting for the fishing net to sink into the water. While waiting, he saw countless stars floating in the dark sea water under the big boat, and the flickering "stars" almost surrounded the boat.

The steel ship is no longer a steel ship, but a solitary spaceship, traveling in the vast space.

Soon, the fishing net was pulled onto the boat by the long rope. The lamp-cheeked snapper is not big, but there is a luminous body below the eye, and the blue light is emitted from here.

Lu Song's net was also brought up, and the two nets together probably had more than 100 fish. He found a plastic basin filled with seawater and put all the shiny lamp snappers in it.

This fish is not easy to raise, but fortunately tomorrow is the fifth day and we can return home. We only need to raise it for one night and don’t have to worry too much about losing the fish.

"These hundred are enough. No need to cast more nets." Liang Ziqiang thought that Jiang Wenang would not be willing to buy too many of these things, so he and Lu Song put away the hand-cast nets.

Just as I put down the net, I saw a large figure leaping out of the sea under the cover of the mast light of the steel ship.

"Wow, there are so many fish, I'm afraid they are bamboo swordfish?" Lin Liming obviously noticed the movement around the steel ship. He raised his arm and pointed to the sea and shouted.

“It seems that it’s not just the saury, right?”

With the help of the boat's lights, Liang Ziqiang took a look and found that there were many sardines jumping out of the water along with the saury.

I picked up the telescope and looked more closely, and saw that fish continued to emerge from the water.

From the looks of it, it seemed that more and more fish were gathering from afar.

"I understand! These are phototactic fish! They were attracted here by the lamprey!" Liang Ziqiang immediately understood what was going on.

He knew from night fishing two years ago that some fish would actively move toward the light and gather together after discovering a large amount of light at night. For example, sardines, bamboo saury, and bluefin mullet are typical examples of fish that like to follow the light.

At present, a large number of lampreys have gathered, forming a gathering zone that is more than several miles long. Such a large light source is extremely rare. It is precisely because of this that the light-seeking fish in the deep sea are attracted here.

"It seems that there are more and more. Do you want to stay up all night and drag a big net?" Lu Song asked hurriedly.

In fact, Liang Ziqiang usually moored the steel ship on the sea with the mast light on, which would attract some phototactic fish, but the scale was not too large. In addition, it was not difficult to catch fish in the deep sea during the day, so he didn't have the energy to stay up late to go fishing at night.

But it’s different now!

The "sea stars" that meandered for several miles startled the light-attracting fish from all directions nearby, and all kinds of fish came in droves.

This level of density is not comparable to normal times!
We started the big boat and worked a night shift. By hauling the fish all the way here, I don’t know how much more fish we caught than usual!

"Get ready to set the net and get started!"

A group of people immediately got busy. At most, they could stay up for a few hours tonight and not fish tomorrow, and sleep in late. Zhu Tianpeng was still driving the boat and began to trawling. The boat dragged along the long "light road" formed by the gathering of lampreys.

Time passed little by little, and they were getting farther and farther away from the place where they had originally planned to anchor the steel ship for the night.

"There seems to be a reef ahead!" Liang Chun shouted.

Under the illumination of the ship's lights, the reef not far away appeared in front of them. In order to see it more carefully, several people took out their special high-intensity flashlights and shone them at the sea surface.

The reef area is not small and its shape is very unique. It is curved into an arc and has a crescent-shaped feel overall.

The time was almost up, Liang Ziqiang ordered to start casting the net.

The catch was dumped onto the deck, and both the quantity and variety of the fish exceeded their expectations.

Compared to the usual 1,000 kilograms, the amount of fish in this net is probably two or three times as much, comparable to that wintering fishing ground!
In addition to the expected sardines, saury, and bluefin mullet, there were also many unexpected fish that were not often seen on the water surface.

There were fat eyed herring and spotted mullet. There was also a kind of shrimp mixed in, which was the nine-segmented shrimp that was not easy to come across at ordinary times, also known as the island country shrimp.

The nine-segmented shrimp is indeed a relatively phototactic species among shrimps.

But this was not the most surprising thing. What Liang Ziqiang could not have expected was that after he pushed aside the densely packed saury, he actually found a lot of groupers!
Grouper is not a typical phototactic fish. Except for some species, such as the brown-spotted grouper, most groupers do not have obvious light-chasing phenomenon.

But now there are blue grouper, brown-banded grouper, tiger grouper, honeycomb grouper, and several species have appeared, and the number is by no means just one or two.

You know, groupers usually hide. Liang Ziqiang usually goes through a lot of trouble to find groupers, and after finding them he can only fish them one by one in the cracks of the rocks.

He had never heard of such a situation where a large number of groupers could be caught in one go through a trawl net. It was even a little unbelievable.

"There is a reef belt next to it. Could it be that all the groupers in the reef have run out?" Liang Chun muttered.

This seems to be one of the explanations, but it doesn't make sense if you think about it carefully. Groupers are rarely willing to run out in groups from the reefs where they hide and then wander around on the sea.

"Let's try again!" Liang Ziqiang decided immediately.

Although I don't know what's going on, since I've encountered it, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I'll just deal with it as soon as possible.

As long as there are really a lot of groupers swimming around in the sea, I would stay up all night.

The price of grouper is much higher than that of ordinary marine fish. What is the concept of using trawl nets to catch grouper?

"A Peng, go slower. Take half an hour or so to get the net up. Try not to hurt the fish!"

Liang Ziqiang just checked and found that some of the groupers mixed in the catch had lost scales or were even damaged. There was no problem in selling them, at most they would be a little cheaper.

But what Liang Ziqiang wanted was not just to sell it at a high price at Yuehai Restaurant.

A while ago, he and his father tried their best but couldn't find a few groupers to take back as brood fish.

Now that June is halfway over and the final spawning period for grouper is almost over, he doesn’t even expect to be able to farm much grouper in addition to snappers this year.

But now that so many groupers have gathered together, his hope of breeding groupers has suddenly been rekindled.

Most species of grouper have a characteristic of being hermaphrodites. Judging from their size, these groupers are basically in the female stage and have not yet reached the age of transformation into males.

As long as they are not injured during the hauling process and are kept energetic enough, the fish in front of him are the broodstock he has been longing for, which can lay eggs and bring a large number of fry!

(End of this chapter)