Chapter 297 - 197: Duo Dive, Re-encountering the Great Giant Grouper

Chapter 297: Chapter 197: Duo Dive, Re-encountering the Great Giant Grouper

As it turned out, Gu Nan didn’t even need to work the rod. He just engaged his core, lifted the rod, and pulled the hooked creature right up.

It was tricky to hook at first, but now that he was reeling it in, the weight was nothing special.

He thought it was a big one, but this was it!

After a few minutes, Gu Nan had reeled in an ugly-cute, strange-looking fish.

The fish’s body was silvery-white. It looked like some kind of deep-sea shark, but it had a long nose, a bit like Pinocchio’s, though not quite as long.

Being a deep-sea fish, its appearance was warped from being brought to the surface.

"This fish..." Gu Nan first used a landing net to scoop the fish up, then studied it, feeling a sense of familiarity.

The fish had a bizarre shape, with a long, thin tail. Though it was about four feet long, all its weight was in the front half. He estimated it was five or six pounds at most—very light.

Unable to guess what kind of fish it was, Gu Nan finally resorted to his identification function.

When he saw the name—Black-lined Silver Chimaera—his expression cleared. He remembered seeing videos of similar fish online.

It might be ugly, but it was supposedly delicious.

According to the description, he saw that this fish not only lived in the deep waters of the northwest Pacific Ocean but also in China’s three major maritime regions.

He put it in his chilled storage. He’d ship it back later to let his girlfriend Chenchen show off her cooking skills and let his parents try something new.

He didn’t dare just leave this thing on the boat like he did with the Han’s Slipper Lobster. Even if Yi Chen didn’t recognize it now, she might in the future.

A creature that could only be caught at a depth of two thousand meters... any explanation he gave would be full of holes. It was better to pay for shipping and save himself the trouble.

’This is a pretty good fish. Its belly is all swollen. I wonder if it has any roe. I’ve heard this fish’s roe is a top-tier delicacy.’

Unfortunately, this fish had no commercial market value. It lived in waters that were too deep, and the number that could be caught was extremely small.

The game didn’t give a specific price, but the Gold Coin buyback value was thirty.

Based on past experience, this fish might be worth ten yuan a pound, but he could also probably trick some big sucker into buying it for a hundred a pound.

Gu Nan had no plans to fish for this type of fish for money anyway. The Bering Sea fish he’d caught tonight weren’t worth much, which had soured his mood for fishing.

He checked the crab hook in his game inventory and decided to switch to it, wanting to see if he had a chance to catch an Emperor Crab or a snow crab.

’It’d be best if I can catch one. If not, I’ll just have to go back to normally fishing for the local fish around this deserted island.’

After changing the hook and baiting it with a sardine, Gu Nan moved to a new spot. He went to the left of the two electric reel rods and cast the baited hook into the water.

The lead sinker pulled the bait down quickly, and it reached the bottom in no time.

If he were really fishing for Emperor Crabs in the Bering Sea, just waiting for the bait to hit the bottom would take quite a while.

He waited for a while with no bites. Meanwhile, the electric reel rod next to him was constantly busy. Gu Nan went over and pressed the retrieve button, then moved the stand for his Bering Sea rod over and set the rod on it to wait.

Just as he secured the rod, freeing up his hands, Gu Nan pulled up a rosy grouper caught on the other line and put it in his aquarium. Only then did the Bering Sea rod show a reaction.

His eyes lit up. The hook he was using was specifically for crabs. ’Does this mean a crab took the bait?’

He hurried over and quickly turned the handle to reel in the line. Hooking a crab wasn’t hard at all; the difficult part was preventing it from escaping.

In just a moment, a thrashing red-eyed snow crab appeared on the surface of the sea.

’Finally, a good catch.’ Gu Nan was very satisfied.

Red-eyed snow crabs weren’t as expensive as Emperor Crabs, but they sold very well. Places like the Junhao Hotel bought large quantities of them every day.

Even if he caught a lot, as long as he controlled the shipping volume, he wouldn’t have to worry about selling them at all.

He’d thought that was all he’d catch for the night, but now things were finally looking up.

The rate of catching crabs with the Bering Sea rod wasn’t that fast. Its overall efficiency was definitely no match for the two golden rods.

By the time the sky began to grow gray with dawn, Gu Nan only had sixty-seven crabs in his aquarium.

If other fishermen had a good haul, a single crab pot could hold that many, or even more.

Their sizes were quite uniform, all around three to four pounds.

What was even more amazing was that there wasn’t a single female crab among them.

The rules for catching Emperor Crabs and snow crabs in the Bering Sea are very strict. Female crabs cannot be harvested; if found, they must be returned to the sea.

’It seems the game didn’t want to cause trouble for me, so it specifically filtered out the female crabs.’

He checked the time. It was a few minutes past five. Gu Nan packed up his fishing rod and went back to sleep.

He first went to the guest bedroom to take a shower, then returned to the master bedroom wearing a bathrobe.

Yi Chen was still asleep. When he lay down on the bed, the clingy little enchantress immediately snuggled closer, her soft body pressing against his.

What fisherman could resist that, let alone a hot-blooded young man like Gu Nan?

He immediately rolled on top of her...

"Oof... You’re awful!"

"I’m so sleepy..."

"Don’t..."

"Sob..."

The sun was too shy to even peek out. Fortunately, it only lasted for about an hour.

...

Gu Nan was woken by a fragrant aroma. As soon as he opened his eyes, he saw a bowl of noodles on the bedside table, with Yi Chen fanning the scent vigorously in his direction.

He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. "What in the world are you doing?"

"Get up, you lazybones! It’s already noon!" Yi Chen said sweetly, standing by the bed.

But even if she hadn’t come to wake him, Gu Nan had actually slept his fill.

He reached out, grabbed Yi Chen, and with a pull, brought her onto the bed amidst her cry of surprise.

Yi Chen landed on top of him with a panicked look on her face. Thinking he was up to no good again, she frantically begged for mercy, "Don’t! My legs are still weak. Let me recover a bit!"

Gu Nan’s roaming hands paused. A hint of embarrassment appeared on his face. ’It seems I might have been a bit... frequent these past few days.’

So he behaved himself and just held her. "I just wanted to cuddle you."

Yi Chen immediately rolled her eyes. ’As if I don’t know what you’re like. If you just wanted to cuddle, your hands wouldn’t have been wandering up and down just now.’

After cuddling for a little while, Gu Nan was finally pulled up by his girlfriend to wash his face and brush his teeth, after which he ate the noodles.

With their stomachs full, the two of them began to pull up the crab and shrimp pots they had set out.

They started with the nearest shrimp pot. As soon as it broke the surface, the inside immediately began to boil like water hitting hot oil.

"Haha, a huge haul! So many shrimp!" Gu Nan was overjoyed. Just from the commotion, he knew this was an excellent catch.

Yi Chen also had a delighted look on her face. Shrimp were expensive and delicious, perfect for either giving as gifts or selling.

And this pot was half full, at least thirty or forty pounds worth.

Lifting the shrimp pot onto the deck, Gu Nan opened it to take a look and found that there was only one type of shrimp inside.

Gu Nan was familiar with this shrimp. The shop across from his old one used to sell them. Because of their blue tails, they were called blue-tailed shrimp.

Some places also called them king prawns. Gu Nan had never asked for the specific scientific name. They were priced at one hundred twenty yuan a pound and were quite rare.

These shrimp were all wild-caught at the moment, not farmed, so they weren’t often seen on the market.

Now that the fishing season was open, they would surely appear on the market from time to time.

These shrimp weren’t small. Gu Nan took a few out of the pot and found that the large ones were longer than his palm, and the average one was about the length of his palm. Very nice.

He got an empty plastic crate, filled it with some seawater from the stern, and took out the aerator he had brought on board.

He poured all the shrimp into the plastic crate, then turned on the aerator to keep them alive as long as possible on the way back.

Live ones could sell for one-twenty, but dead ones would only fetch fifty or sixty.

Then, Yi Chen went to the cabin to pilot the boat while he pulled up two more shrimp pots in succession. When he discovered they were also full of blue-tailed shrimp, he was so angry he could have stomped his feet.

’Son of a bitch! If those two shrimp pots hadn’t been stolen, I’d have at least another sixty or seventy pounds of blue-tailed shrimp. That’s six or seven thousand yuan down the drain!’

The three shrimp pots held an estimated hundred-some pounds of shrimp—a hefty amount.

Gu Nan didn’t have time to sort them for now. He just got two more crates, filled them with some seawater, and kept the shrimp in there.

Fortunately, the aerator had six tubes, so he just had to turn it to maximum power. He could always recharge it on the boat anyway.

With the shrimp pots all dealt with, it was time for the crab pots.

When the winch lifted the crab pot, both Gu Nan and Yi Chen suddenly felt like they were watching a scene of Emperor Crab fishing in the Bering Sea.

There were simply too many swimming crabs in the pot. His crab pots weren’t that big; they could hold a hundred pounds of crab at most.

But right now, the crabs took up two-thirds of the space in the pot, which he estimated to be sixty or seventy pounds.

’If one pot has this many, wouldn’t ten pots have six or seven hundred pounds?’

There were still five ground traps set in the water across from the beach. If they were also full of swimming crabs, he wasn’t sure if the boat could even hold them all.

The price of swimming crabs varied by size, but at an average of forty yuan a pound, six or seven hundred pounds would be worth over twenty thousand, maybe even close to thirty thousand yuan.

As all ten crab pots were brought up, Yi Chen came to his side and couldn’t help but exclaim, "This money is too easy to make, isn’t it? The haul from a single trip out to sea is more than what an average person makes in a year."

Gu Nan smiled. "Otherwise, why would people spend millions to work so hard in the deep sea? And this is just now. It used to be even more."

But Yi Chen shook her head. "Resources were better in the past, but the prices were also relatively cheaper. That’s how it is with seafood—the scarcer it is, the higher the price. So as long as our harvest is big enough, we might earn more than people did back when resources were plentiful."

Gu Nan thought about it and realized she was right.

Back in the ’60s and ’70s, people living by the sea could eat abalone and sea cucumber until they were sick of them.

He was a coastal person himself, and he’d heard his grandfather sigh about this plenty of times when he was a child.

Back then, the most desirable food was pork. For the poor, the only purpose of delicacies from the mountains and seas was to be exchanged for money.

If you asked them to choose between pork and those delicacies, they would definitely choose pork.

The harvest was joyful, but sorting it all left the two of them on the boat feeling completely overwhelmed.

The shrimp were fine; they were small and easy to store.

But deep-sea swimming crabs were different from mud crabs. After being taken out of the water, even if kept in a cool place, they would probably all be dead within half a day. They couldn’t survive for long out of the water.

Gu Nan thought for a moment and said to Yi Chen, "Chenchen, let’s put them back in the crab pots to keep them alive for now. We’ll pull them up again when we’re about to head back. We can sort them by size and all that after we get home. Let’s not pull up the ground traps for now."

Yi Chen nodded, having no objection.

There was no other choice. The boat they rented was a bit too small. Mainly, Gu Nan hadn’t expected to catch so many swimming crabs.

But it was true. Now that the fishing season had just opened, the fishing boats that specialized in catching swimming crabs would haul back thousands or even tens of thousands of pounds at a time. Their catch was truly nothing in comparison.