Chapter 194 - 135: Gu Nan: I’ve Caught the Big Fish, Do You Dare to Eat It?

Chapter 194: Chapter 135: Gu Nan: I’ve Caught the Big Fish, Do You Dare to Eat It?

Watching the numbers on the electric reel, he let out about thirty-five meters of line before stopping to wait for a bite. At this depth, the hairtail were likely to be quite large.

As he let out about twenty meters of line on the boat rod in his hand, the tip suddenly bent. A fish was on.

Gu Nan tucked the butt of the rod under his arm, raised the tip high, and rapidly cranked the handle with his right hand. Leaning back slightly, he could bring the fish up quickly and with little effort.

In no time at all, he pulled up a shimmering, silver fish that looked like a narrow steel bar.

That first catch came unusually fast. It was mostly a coincidence—the bait had been intercepted on its way down.

The hairtail’s dorsal fin was fully spread, fluttering like a silk scarf. He had to admit, that fin alone was truly beautiful.

One of the perks of being an angler was getting to see what these sea creatures really looked like up close.

Under the lights, the live hairtail was a beautiful, shimmering silver. As long as you didn’t look at its head, it was quite attractive.

Many people mistakenly think hairtail are deep-sea fish that die as soon as they reach the surface.

In reality, at night, if you took good care of the live hairtail you caught, they could absolutely survive until you got back to shore.

It just wasn’t necessary. Their value was what it was, unlike some fish that are worth much more alive than dead.

Offshore hairtail were never small. This one was about three and a half fingers wide, the perfect size for the dinner table.

Though it was over half a meter long, it actually only weighed about half a pound.

"..." Wang Junhe looked at his own motionless rod, then glanced over at Gu Nan, who was pressing the button on his electric reel to retrieve his line.

He hadn’t even gotten a bite yet, and the other guy already had two.

For him, fishing with Gu Nan was truly a bittersweet experience.

The "bitter" part was that his own haul could never compare to Gu Nan’s. He’d even have to watch with envy as the other man landed huge fish.

The "sweet" part was that those big fish would eventually become his. Then, he’d have to ask the grandpas and grandmas in his residential complex for directions back to his own apartment.

’These modern architects are so unprofessional. Buildings are meant for living in. I can forgive all the landscaping in the complex, but why add so many little paths? How’s a guy supposed to find his way home!’

But when there was a fish run, even someone who usually came up empty would catch something.

As Gu Nan pulled up his second hairtail—a four-finger-wide one—with his electric reel, Wang Junhe’s rod next to him finally showed some action.

If you couldn’t even catch a fish in these conditions, you might as well give up fishing, learn to dive, and just take up spearfishing instead.

It’s not like your luck could be so bad that the moment you hit the water to spearfish, a 500-meter radius around you would instantly become a dead zone, right?

He unhooked the fish and tossed this hairtail into the box behind him as well. These boxes had all been prepared by Guo Xiao.

The hairtail tossed into the box writhed its body like a snake a few times, its mouth opening and closing as if trying to bite something. Its eyes, however, looked surprisingly intelligent, just like that tuxedo cat Ye Jing had shown him earlier that evening.

’Holy crap!’

Gu Nan suddenly realized. ’Black and white... I’m doomed!’

’The saying that all black-and-white creatures are basically "huskies" wasn’t just made up.’

’Never mind actual huskies—pandas, orcas, border collies, and tuxedo cats, no matter how normal they seem, can’t resist the moments when their inner husky takes over.’

Gu Nan sucked in a sharp breath.

He felt a headache coming on. ’Maybe I should go take a look tomorrow. If it’s really a problem, I can just find another cat. Yi Chen just wants a cute one, it doesn’t have to be that specific one.’

His mind may have been wandering, but his hands didn’t stop for a second.

The bait on the tenya rig of his electric rod was mostly intact, so he could keep fishing with it.

When fishing for hairtail with a tenya rig, you could be quite economical with bait.

But this time, he got a fish after dropping the line only six or seven meters. ’Alright, time to reel it in!’

He reeled in a three-finger-wide one. If they were this big in the upper water column, it was clear this school of hairtail didn’t have any small ones.

But this kind of interception was still relatively rare. Gu Nan once again dropped his bait to a depth of nearly forty meters, then did the same with his boat rod.

Hairtail swim upwards at an angle. They aren’t fast, but the schools are incredibly dense. Once you found the right depth and waited a moment, you’d get a bite, and it would be a strong one.

The feeling on the line was a bit like pulling up a lobster. They didn’t run with the line; they just felt a little light.

The ones Gu Nan was catching were hairtail from the East China Sea region, specifically the small-eyed hairtail, which is a tastier variety.

It was a pity they weren’t the small-eyed hairtail from the northern inland seas—those were ranked number one. The Zhoushan hairtail came in second.

The kind he was catching could only be ranked third, but that was still pretty good.

Most of the hairtail at the forty-meter depth were a good size, basically four fingers wide, with the occasional larger one.

For fish this size, typical home-style cooking methods didn’t quite do them justice. They were usually bought up by hotels and seafood restaurants.

Over the next half hour, Gu Nan’s efficiency with two rods was almost equal to that of the other four people combined.

In just that short amount of time, he had already filled a small box with an estimated forty or so fish.

The efficiency wasn’t as good as during the last few fish runs, mainly because the bite frequency wasn’t as high.

It was already one in the morning, which wasn’t the best time for the bite, so that was to be expected.

The other two club shareholders watched, their eyelids twitching. ’Good lord, I thought this was supposed to be recreational fishing. And here you are, stocking up like a wholesaler!’

Gu Nan couldn’t care less what others were thinking right now. He wasn’t particularly concerned about whether it was a competition or not; making money was what mattered at the moment.

Pole-caught hairtail wasn’t cheap. During the closed fishing season, fish like these, averaging four fingers wide, could sell for over a hundred yuan a pound.

Net-caught ones certainly weren’t that expensive, but there weren’t any net-caught ones available now, were there!