Chapter 375: Chapter 243: Return Voyage, Collecting and Selling Fish (2)

Working together, An Jun and Ye Jing quickly hauled in all the crab and shrimp pots.

The catch from the shallow waters was decent. They had lobsters and crabs, and a good number of fish had even found their way into the traps.

The three of them sorted the catch, ending up with over seventy jin of large crabs. They released all the small ones.

The crabs were mostly blue swimming crabs. They also had over a dozen lobsters and a number of other fish.

The haul was actually pretty average, but it was better than coming back empty-handed.

After they finished, they hosed down the deck, and the three men went to their cabins to wash up and get some sleep.

Pulling an all-nighter fishing took not just a mental toll; it had also almost completely drained their physical stamina.

Gu Nan slept like the dead, not waking up until three in the afternoon.

Yi Chen decided to sleep in as well, lingering in that half-awake, half-asleep state, with no desire to get up.

Perhaps knowing they would be heading home soon, she had relaxed.

As evening fell, the group listlessly gathered in the galley to prepare dinner.

The Nanchen finally began its voyage home. The trip had been a resounding success.

Gu Nan had caught six tuna—two each of bluefin, bigeye, and yellowfin—plus a large grouper.

An Jun and Ye Jing also had impressive hauls, each catching four tuna: two bluefin, one bigeye, and one yellowfin.

After dinner, the women went to watch a show while the three "brothers" gathered at the helm.

An Jun claimed his four tuna, along with some Shalu shrimp, a few crabs, and some other fish. He gave the rest of his catch, worth several thousand yuan, to Gu Nan to cover his share of the boat fees.

He’d had a good haul from their earlier fishing efforts, so this batch of fish was mainly to cover his boat fee.

Ye Jing did likewise, but he sold the rest of his catch to Gu Nan.

One of the bigeye tuna weighed 302 jin after being processed. The ones they’d run into were all over 300 jin, making them the largest tuna they caught on this trip.

Gu Nan offered a price of 81 yuan per jin, which came out to 24,000 yuan.

The yellowfin tuna was just over 173 jin, and Gu Nan priced it at 41 yuan per jin.

The price for the bluefin tuna was still pending. The final sale method would depend on how Wang Junhe and his partner handled the purchase once they got back.

Would they offer a flat price, or would it be graded based on the quality of the meat? Because of this uncertainty, he didn’t purchase it yet.

Besides what he gave Gu Nan for the boat fee, Ye Jing still sold over 7,000 yuan worth of fish. In the end, he just kept some Shalu shrimp and crabs to take home for his family to try.

Gu Nan was a man of his word and paid up on the spot. With that, he now had a total of ten tuna, including four bluefins. This would be enough to satisfy a couple of the rich clients in his fish-buying group.

Taking turns at the helm through the night, the Nanchen finally returned to Fisherman’s Wharf shortly after lunch the next day.

"Whoa, we’re finally back!" Xu Zhina exclaimed from the deck, letting out a sigh of relief for reasons she couldn’t quite place.

The trip had been a lot of fun, but being back gave her a strange sense of solid ground beneath her feet.

"Yeah, we’re back!" Jin Enfei felt the same way, and the two exchanged a knowing smile.

Gu Nan had just finished mooring the boat and hadn’t even had a chance to leave the cabin when he heard the voices of Wang Junhe and Guo Xiao outside. Apparently they were back from their business trip and had come to the wharf specifically to wait for his boat.

The Nanchen’s berth was in the area for large boats at Fisherman’s Wharf, which was actually less bustling than its original spot.

The two locations were separated by several hundred meters, and since it wasn’t the usual time for the big ships to return, there were few fishmongers around.

It wasn’t like before, where new fishmongers would always swarm a returning fishing boat, trying to get in on the action.

"Brother Wang, Brother Guo!" Gu Nan greeted them as he stepped out of the cabin, then noticed a stranger with them. "And who is this?"

"Oh, this is the specialist we called in to help appraise the quality of the bluefin," Wang Junhe explained.

He and Guo Xiao had originally considered just making a flat offer, but they were worried Gu Nan might not know the market. They feared he might believe the exaggerated prices for bluefin seen online. So, after some thought, they decided to bring in a professional to break it down for him.

This way, he would understand that while bluefin was expensive, it wasn’t absurdly so.

Gu Nan’s interest was immediately piqued. He greeted the specialist, then worked with An Jun and the others to hoist the six bluefin tuna out of the refrigerated hold with the crane.

Of the four bluefin he had for sale, Gu Nan needed to set one aside for a tycoon in his group chat and another for the shipyard owner he’d already promised one to. The remaining two were for Wang Junhe and Guo Xiao, one for each.

An Jun’s tuna were just there for the show—to get an appraisal of their value, not to be sold.

As for the large grouper, Old Wang deferred to Old Guo this time. Old Guo was hosting a dinner for some friends in a few days and was planning a fish feast.

Guo Xiao didn’t mess around, offering a flat 80,000 yuan and taking it away.

Gu Nan paid that no mind; he was busy watching the quality assessment specialist, learning how the appraisal process worked.

The tails of the bluefin had already been lopped off, allowing for a direct visual inspection of the meat’s fat content.

Next, he took out a thin metal tube and plunged it into the fish’s body. When he pulled it out, the tube contained a core sample of the tuna’s flesh.

Gu Nan was taken aback. ’This is exactly like in those American documentaries...’

Over there, a pound of bluefin usually went for twenty to thirty US dollars. Exceptionally high-quality meat could fetch over thirty-five, and it was extremely rare to see anything above forty.

Converted, the local purchase price for bluefin tuna was basically around 170 to 300 yuan or so.

Of course, those were prices from a documentary that was over a decade old, and that was the procurement price in America, at that.

But in reality, the procurement prices in Shangdu weren’t all that different; it was rare for anything to go over 400 yuan per jin.

Gu Nan then learned from the specialist that this was a relatively primitive assessment method. Nowadays, at the international seafood market in Shangdu that specialized in large fish like tuna, they used machines to measure the quality of the flesh, which was far more convenient.

The assessment of the six fish was over quickly. Two were graded B+ and the rest were A-grade. It was a batch of exceptionally good bluefin.

The B+ fish belonged to An Jun and Ye Jing. In Shangdu, fish of this grade would typically fetch a purchase price of 250 to 300 yuan per jin.

A-grade fish generally went for 300 to 350 yuan per jin, while A+ grade bluefin were very rare these days and almost exclusively imported.

Wang Junhe and Guo Xiao didn’t haggle. They based their offer on the highest end of the procurement price range and even threw in an extra 50 yuan per jin.

This put the B+ grade fish at 350 yuan per jin, and the A-grade ones at 400 yuan per jin.

The B+ fish weighed in at 277 jin, for a total price of 97,000 yuan.

However, they didn’t take this one; Gu Nan was saving it to sell to a customer from his group chat.

Of the remaining three A-grade fish, one weighed 298 jin, with a price of 119,200 yuan.

Another weighed 289 jin, priced at 115,600 yuan.

The last one was 281 jin, priced at 112,400 yuan.

Wang Junhe was also buying one on behalf of the shipyard owner, so he paid for everything at once.

The three tuna came to a total of 347,200 yuan, plus another 80,000 for the grouper.

Over 400,000 yuan was transferred directly to Gu Nan’s account, but a portion of that money belonged to Ye Jing.

After Wang Junhe and his group left with the fish, crabs, and Shalu shrimp in tow, Gu Nan immediately settled up with Ye Jing.

Gu Nan only took the 50-yuan-per-jin difference as his commission, paying Ye Jing based on the standard appraised procurement price.

One fish came to 83,100 yuan, and the other to 101,150 yuan, for a grand total of 184,250 yuan.

Seeing the total, Ye Jing’s hands started to tremble. He didn’t even make this much in a whole year, and now he’d earned it all on a single fishing trip.

An Jun chimed in wistfully from the side, "Ah Nan, are you still buying? Is it too late for me to change my mind?"

Gu Nan just chuckled. "You’d really part with it?"

An Jun scratched his head. "It’s just... I don’t think my shop can use that much. If I’m just selling it as food, I’m better off just sourcing the sashimi-grade cuts like otoro and chutoro separately. The off-cuts are a pain to sell."

"If you’re serious, then sell it to me. I’ll buy it at the highest procurement price, too!" ’It’s not like I’m selling to the seafood market,’ he thought. ’A higher purchase price doesn’t matter. The clients will foot the bill.’

’Besides, there were still tycoons in the group chat fuming because they hadn’t been able to snag a tuna!’

’That 50-yuan-per-jin difference was nothing to sneeze at. Looked at another way, just by flipping this one fish, he was essentially getting a yellowfin of the same weight for free.’

An Jun mulled it over and, in the end, decided to sell the A-grade tuna to Gu Nan, keeping the B+ one for himself.

It was simply too much; his shop would never be able to use it all. It was better to sell it now than to let it sit and potentially go bad in the freezer at Gu Nan’s new shop.

’They were buddies who went deep-sea fishing together. Was he really going to worry about not getting more fish in the future?’

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