Chapter 320: Chapter 213: The Diligent Fish Gets the Hook (2)

Since he wasn’t live-streaming in the afternoon, Gu Nan moved the holders for his two electric reels over to the walkway. He then took out his fishing rods, started rigging the lines, and mounted them in the holders.

When he wasn’t streaming, he used the electric reel rods. It was less effort, which meant he wouldn’t get as hot, and he could "stock up" on fish even faster.

"Alright, everyone, listen up," Guo Xiao announced, explaining the fishing conditions. "The terrain here is a bit tricky and the fish are right at the bottom. It’s easy to get snagged, so don’t let your hooks sink too low."

"Are you kidding? Me, get snagged?" Wang Junhe scoffed. He baited his hook with a live shrimp and cast it out. Barely ten seconds later, he felt a tug on his rod. He excitedly yanked it back to set the hook, but... it wouldn’t budge!

"Pfft..." Guo Xiao burst out laughing. "Did you really have to eat your words that fast?"

Wang Junhe felt his face flush, and he quickly made an excuse. "Hold on, maybe I’m not snagged. It could be a moray eel that likes to burrow into crevices."

"Well, good luck with that!" Guo Xiao said, nonchalantly baiting his own hook with a live shrimp and starting to fish.

Since they were each only using one rod, they got started much faster than Gu Nan.

However, Gu Nan had also finished rigging one of his rods by now. He baited it with a live shrimp and let the line out to start fishing, then began rigging his second set of tackle while the first rod was in the water.

Of course, he had already thrown the chum into the water; it just hadn’t had time to draw the fish in yet.

This time, they were fishing at a depth of fifty meters. The water temperature there wasn’t too high, so the fish were quite active.

They also weren’t using bait cages to attract fish, mainly because fish drawn in by a cage can’t actually eat the bait, so it doesn’t "give back to the sea."

As dedicated anglers, they understood the principle of "what comes from the ocean should be used for the ocean," so they wouldn’t be stingy with their chum.

For deep-sea fish, however, you had to use a bait cage. Chumming the surface was pointless, as waves and undercurrents would carry the chum off to god-knows-where before it could ever sink to the bottom.

SPLASH~

Just as Wang Junhe snapped his leader, re-rigged his line, and cast it back out, Gu Nan finished setting up his second rod.

He baited the hook with a live shrimp, and the three-pound lead sinker dragged the bait and hook rapidly toward the seabed.

WHIRRR... The electric reel spooled out line. Watching the numbers on the display, Gu Nan pressed the button to stop the spool once it neared the depth of the fish school, and then he waited for a bite.

The difference between when the chum was working and when it wasn’t was truly stark. Even though the fish finder showed the bottom was teeming with fish, the bite rate was terrible before the school had been drawn in.

Gu Nan’s first line had been in the water for a little while now with no action, and it was the same for Wang Junhe and Guo Xiao next to him.

Fortunately, patience is one thing anglers have in spades, so a temporary lack of bites wasn’t going to make them antsy.

Besides, the fish don’t tend to bite much around noon anyway, so it wasn’t surprising that they hadn’t caught anything yet.

This actually had something to do with Gu Nan’s bait not being right on the bottom. The school of fish below was busy eating the sunken chum and hadn’t yet noticed the live shrimp dangling above them.

However, once the school had devoured more than half of the chum, the still-wriggling live shrimp above finally caught the attention of a few fish.

ZIP~

Within ten seconds, all four fishing rods had a fish on almost simultaneously.

Gu Nan had it easy; he just pushed a couple of buttons and waited for the fish to be reeled up. Wang Junhe and Guo Xiao, however, began deftly reeling in their catches.

WHIRRR!

The line came in at lightning speed; the two of them were cranking the handles so fast they became a blur.

The two of them exchanged a look—the competition was on.

Gu Nan shook his head with a laugh. ’Men and their inexplicable need to compete.’

"Haha, up you come! Old Wang, I’m still faster!" Guo Xiao crowed, holding up a yellow croaker of a little over two pounds that he’d just yanked out of the water. He shot a smug grin at Wang Junhe, who was a beat slower.

Wang Junhe refused to concede. "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re fast, alright. You’re the fastest!"

Guo Xiao’s expression faltered. He immediately sensed that something was off about that.

Gu Nan put on a look of dramatic realization. "Oh, so that’s what he means!"

Guo Xiao finally caught on and sputtered, "Hey! What are you guys implying? I meant fast at fishing! Not *that* kind of fast. I’ve got plenty of stamina, you know!"

Gu Nan: "Oh, right, right, right..."

Wang Junhe: "Right, right, whatever you say!"

Guo Xiao: "..."

The electric reels retrieved the line at a steady pace. When it came to catching small fish, they naturally couldn’t match the "thirty-years-of-being-single" hand speed of the other two.

By the time the other two had landed their fish and were starting on their second, his two yellow croakers were just coming up.

They weren’t huge, weighing in at around three to four pounds.

However, yellow croakers only grow to a maximum of about sixty centimeters, so a three- or four-pounder was already a main-sized fish in the school.

Since all four rods had hooked a yellow croaker, there was clearly a school of them on the bottom.

Unfortunately, the bite was indeed a bit slow around noon; they had to wait a while after every cast to get a fish on the line.

Still, the "stocking up" speed was actually decent. The efficiency of two electric rods wasn’t any worse than his back-to-back catches from the previous night.

Time trickled by. By the hottest part of the day, the plastic fish box next to Gu Nan was already stuffed full.

It wasn’t all yellow croakers; he’d occasionally pull up a grouper, parrotfish, or red emperor as well.

Gu Nan reeled in his lines and paused his fishing for a moment to move the box of fish to the refrigerated hold.

Not all the fish needed to be bled. They would be heading back in a day or two after fishing today, so the catch would still be perfectly fresh.

When he returned to his fishing spot, he brushed against a part of the rod that had been baking in the sun and snatched his hand back with a yelp. It was scorching hot.

"Why don’t we head back in for a nap and go looking for tuna or something tonight?" Gu Nan suggested.

He hadn’t forgotten the main purpose of this trip: to catch tuna.

Any kind of tuna would be more interesting than catching these yellow croakers and mahi-mahi, unless, of course, they ran into another school of silver pomfret.

"Forget tonight, let’s go now. Finding tuna isn’t that easy. I’ll head over to a spot where I’ve often caught large tuna before and check it out."

At the mention of tuna, Guo Xiao nodded, his interest in these smaller fish instantly vanishing.

He and Wang Junhe were mainly here for the fun of it. Whether they caught a lot of fish or just a few didn’t matter; it was all about the experience of catching new species.

And so, the three of them packed up their rods and went back to the salon to cool off in the air conditioning.

Guo Xiao and Wang Junhe went up to the helm, while Gu Nan sidled up to Yi Chen, who was sitting on the sofa and jotting something down.

When he saw she was recording customer pre-orders for tuna in her notebook—with five-hundred-yuan deposits—he couldn’t help but exclaim, ’Holy cow.’

"Chenchen, what’s going on here? People can pre-order fish we haven’t even caught?"

"Oh, the customers are just so enthusiastic. They were asking if we might run into any tuna. We were just chatting, and I’m not even sure how it happened, but someone offered to pay a deposit to get first pick."

"So, I’m just taking down their names for now. If we catch any, they get first pick. If we don’t, I’ll only refund four hundred of the deposit."

"But if we do catch tuna, these people who paid a deposit will get a five-yuan discount per jin. If there aren’t enough tuna to go around, anyone who misses out can pick another fish instead, but in that case, the deposit is non-refundable."

Gu Nan glanced at the number of people who had paid a deposit. ’Holy cow, there are over thirty of them,’ he thought. ’They really overestimate me. If I run into large tuna, catching three or four in one night would be the absolute limit.’

But either way, they wouldn’t be losing any money. He had no idea how Yi Chen had managed to convince this crowd.

"By the way, how many fish did you catch this afternoon? What are the species, and about how much does each one weigh?" By this point, Yi Chen had already sold all of the silver pomfret from the previous night.

It was only a pre-sale, though. She had just recorded the quantities and taken deposits; the exact weights would have to be determined once they got back.

"Let me go do a quick count, then I’ll tell you." After seeing her notebook, Gu Nan understood the sales model. He went to the refrigerated hold to confirm the numbers, then came back and jotted them down in the notebook so Yi Chen could continue selling.

This model was a bit of a hassle, but that little bit of extra trouble resulted in much higher profits.

If they sold the fish in a shop, it would take time. As the fish lost their freshness, they’d have to drop the price. Clearly, it wasn’t as profitable as selling the entire catch at once.

The afternoon flew by. Guo Xiao was still at the helm, a clear sign that tuna weren’t so easy to find.

It wasn’t until dinnertime that he finally stopped the boat next to a large oil rig.

This wasn’t the same oil rig Gu Nan had visited before; this one was much larger.

There were quite a few other fishing boats in the area. According to Guo Xiao, the lights from the rig at night often attracted schools of tuna—mostly yellowfin. Tonight, they would try their luck.

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