After dinner, Ye Yaodong pushed the cart to get the sticky net, and also took back the hooks that he had taken to repair a few days ago.
Then he went out to sea without stopping to collect the traps. He took advantage of the high tide and the boat went out. If he collected them quickly, he could still make it in time before the tide receded.
By the way, I'll check to see if the waves are big in the evening and whether I can go out at night, and then consider collecting some fish as bait.
There was no rush to move the rolling wheels. There would still be enough time to take back the trap and then ask his father to go to Uncle Lin's house together.
After he went over the sequence of things in his mind, he got on the boat. He hadn't driven the boat for a few days, so he checked all the engines inside and outside the boat. After finding no problems, he refueled and drove out directly.
The sky is blue, the water is blue, the sea is rippling, and the fishing boats are sailing out, creating circle after circle of ripples. It is a rare day with sunny skies.
Listening to the guys chatting on the shore, the fishing boats have had pretty good catches recently, mainly because of the price. The only difference is that there are fewer types of fish to catch. Many of those who used to trawle in the middle and upper layers now choose to add lead sinkers to do bottom trawling.
They don’t have a net-lifting machine on their boat, so it’s very demanding on their arms and legs. Now we have to make arrangements based on the situation.
He sailed the boat towards the area where he had placed the traps and stopped only when he saw the familiar buoy.
Amid the clattering sound of the diesel engine, he pulled up the buoy and began to collect the net. As expected, most of the fish in the net were still starfish.
Damn it, he no longer had any enthusiasm for seeing the starfish. He was no longer as happy as when he first saw them on the shore. He had become numb.
He poured all the catch in the net onto the boat, most of them were starfish, but there were also a few fish and shrimps. He was in no hurry to sort them out and continued collecting.
All were poured onto the boat, and he planned to sort and load the goods slowly after docking.
Who would have thought that after he had collected half of the traps, as soon as he untied the net in his hand, several huge shrimps slipped out, and his eyes lit up instantly.
This shrimp looks fat and interesting, but it is actually a kind of Zen shrimp. It has thick and short claws with a dark red color, a flat pentagonal forehead, and a hard and thick shell.
The three lobsters that just fell out of the net are all super big, as big as an adult's palm, and each weighs about 15 taels. The price of such a big lobster is almost as high as that of lobster, and the price is not low even now. It's a pity that there are only three of them.
After Ye Yaodong picked out the three shrimps alone, he happily continued to work hard.
Unexpectedly, he pulled up a huge sinker in the net right after that. He thought he had found some big catch, but when he dragged it out of the sea, he found out it was a huge jellyfish.
Damn it, he cursed as he dragged the net up, "Damn, you wasted my whole net. When did the sea have so many jellyfish?"
He scolded him as he untied the bag of fish, and no matter how much he hated jellyfish he still pulled up the net and threw it back into the water.
While he was untying the rope, he saw some starfish sticking out of the fish bag. He didn't think much of it, as there were indeed too many starfish along the coast recently.
He shook the fishing net, hoping to see what else was trapped under the jellyfish, but he unexpectedly shook out some sea cicadas.
"Fuck, there's something good buried underneath. My goodness, it's all blocked by the jellyfish. No wonder I didn't see it when I pulled it up..."
He nimbly untied the rope and a small pile of sea cicadas slid out, mixed with some starfish.
In fact, the scientific name of these sea cicadas is Liberation Crab, which is also a kind of cicada shrimp. It’s just that these sea cicadas are very small, not as big as the three shrimps he just caught, and their local names are also very detailed.
The big one is called mantis shrimp, and the small one is called sea cicada. This sea cicada is a marine creature between shrimp and crab. It can be often picked up on the beach at low tide. It tastes better than crab.
It can be said to be a cicada monkey that grows in the sea, but it is more delicious than a cicada monkey.
Although it is small in size, it is more tender and delicious than shrimp meat, and it has a lot of roe, which is more delicious and fragrant than crab roe. Because it looks like a cicada monkey, it is often misunderstood by people, and some people mistake it for a mole shrimp.
Ye Yaodong first threw the troublesome big white jellyfish into the water, and then began to fiddle with the sea cicadas. He estimated that they weighed about four or five kilograms and would be worth some money in a few decades. They would not sell for much money now, but they were really delicious.
Not knowing if there were more behind, he pushed them to the corner first, intending to sort them out slowly after collecting all the trap nets.
After putting the trap back down, he started collecting the goods again.
There are still the same number of ground traps, but due to the influence of starfish, the number of fish has been reduced by half.
A few days ago, there were a lot of starfish, and every net was full. The people who set up the traps were very happy, but the number has decreased in the past two days, and they can't smile anymore.
All the trap nets were collected and the cargo was dumped onto the boat. Although there were piles of cargo like small mountains, there were not many cargoes, most of them were starfish.
After sorting them out, I threw the starfish into sacks first, but I only collected two sacks, which were worth about four dollars.
Damn~ I haven’t harvested them for four or five days, and there are only this many. It looks like the starfish are almost gone.
Those sea cicadas and shrimps were quite impressive, and I was lucky enough to catch a blue grouper weighing about two kilograms in my trap. It must have just run in and was still able to jump a few times.
Ye Yaodong first picked up the big shrimps and put them into the bucket. There was half a bucket full of them, which looked to weigh about five or six kilograms.
Then we pick out the remaining fish. Some of them are not fresh anymore because they have been in the sea for too many days. The fish caught from the traps are usually dead.
After the fish enter the ground trap, they will eventually gather in the fish collecting bag. The space in the fish collecting bag is small, which can easily cause local density to be too high, resulting in lack of oxygen and suffocation.
Even though they were dead when I received them the next day, they were still fresh. It has been four or five days now, and most of the fish gills are no longer bright red, their eyeballs have turned white or sunken, and their bodies have no elasticity when pressed.
Ye Yaodong picked out all the stale fish with some regret and threw them back into the sea. The seabirds over the sea, having tasted the sweetness, began to fly around the fishing boats with a covetous look, waiting for him to throw the stale fish into the sea, and then they would swoop down and pick them up.
To determine whether the fish is fresh or not, you mainly need to look at the fish's body surface and gills.
The first thing is to look at the fish's eyes. Fresh fish have healthy and clear eye membranes; stale fish usually have bloodshot eye membranes and their eyeballs begin to sink.
The second thing to look at is the fish gills. The gills of fresh fish are bright red. If the gills are white and have a lot of mucus, it means the fish has been dead for a long time.
The third thing to do is to look at the fish body. Press the fish meat with your fingers. If the meat is sunken and does not bounce back, it is not fresh.
The same thing happened with the shrimps, most of them were smelly, and the stale shrimps had a musty smell, like rotten meat.
Ye Yaodong threw and sorted the fish and saw that a three or four jin sea bass and an eight or nine jin sea wolf fish were no longer fresh. He felt sorry for them and forgot to ask his father to come out and collect them when he left. He didn't know that he would stay at his mother-in-law's house for so many days.
I guess his father thought he had told his older brothers, and his older brothers thought he had told his father.
Most of the fish and shrimp went to the seabirds, and only a small amount that had just been caught in the net was still fresh.
After picking out the remaining fresh goods and putting them into the bucket, the surrounding seabirds are still flying in the air, reluctant to leave.
"Are you still not full? If you don't leave, I'll catch you all!"
Because of his feeding, nearby seabirds gathered around his fishing boat. The number seemed quite considerable. It directly attracted fishing boats not far away to come towards him.
When he raised his head and looked at the sea around him, he found that there were seven or eight small wooden boats around him. Some were close, some were far away, but they were all moving towards him.
He was speechless for a moment...
It was a complete misunderstanding!
Fishermen generally know that where seabirds gather, there are often schools of fish, but there were none today...
He is the one feeding...
A fishing boat came towards him first, circled around him but saw nothing. Bewildered, it moved closer to him.
"Is that you, Adong? Was there a school of fish around just now? Has it dispersed? Did you catch any?"
This is an old fisherman from their village. Ye Yaodong looked at him with a smile on his face. "There are no fish. These birds are flying here because I just threw out a lot of stale fish."
"Ah, is that so? How much did you throw? So many seabirds are flying over here..."
"Most of the catch has been thrown away. I haven't been home for four or five days and forgot to ask my dad to collect it. Most of the fish and shrimp in the traps have gone bad."
"Is that so? That's such a pity... it's just a waste of feeding the birds..."
He frowned, feeling a little regretful. Seeing another fishing boat approaching, he rowed and shouted, "There are no fish here, no need to come over."
But how could people listen to him? How could they believe it without even taking a look? How could they give up? They still rowed in this direction.
Ye Yaodong thought the same, so he didn’t waste his breath shouting just now. He would know the answer after coming over and taking a look.
All the small wooden boats around were sailing towards him, getting closer and closer. He ignored them and followed them, driving his boat ahead and heading straight to the shore.
He drove at full speed, leaving all the fishing boats behind him behind. The fishing boats far away, seeing his big boat leave this area, might regret missing it... and not having the time to get close...
Just ignore them anyway.
Once he got close to the dock, he carried his limited catch off the boat and weighed it.
Sea cicadas were worthless, so he kept them all. He also kept 4 shrimps, and sold the rest including starfish and grouper.
Blue grouper is not expensive among groupers. He has caught it before. One pound is only about 2 yuan. Shrimp are 80 cents a pound. He has 5.6 jin. Two sacks of starfish were sold for 4 yuan. The total sales of the afternoon goods were only more than 15 yuan. Too much was thrown away.
But it’s okay, just so-so, and this is the average harvest from ground traps.