Chapter 383: Catching a Sea Beast
Chapter 383: Catching a Sea Beast
Li Changle and his companions took off their waterproof pants and rain boots and placed them on the deck. Without even washing their feet and faces, they returned to the cabin and lay on the beds. Not long after, snoring sounds could be heard in the cabin.
I felt like I had just fallen asleep when I was woken up by Chen Yongwei, "Brother, it's half past seven, the tide has dried up."
"Oh!" Li Changle rubbed his eyes, turned around and saw that Brother Li and Wang Xincheng had already gotten out of bed and walked out. He closed his eyes for a few seconds before turning over and getting out of bed.
"Brother, what are you doing up?"
"I've slept for three hours, so it's almost time." Brother Li put on his shoes. "Put out the longline fishing line. The tide is almost rising. It's just the right time to drag in two nets and come back to collect the fishing."
"Okay!" Li Changle went to the kitchen to wash up and came out. Chen Yongwei and Li Erge and others had already moved the bait and bamboo baskets for longline fishing to the deck.
"It's been cloudy for more than ten days, and finally the sun is shining."
"If we don't come out soon, we'll get moldy." Brother Li looked at the wind direction, started the fishing boat, turned the rudder and headed west.
During this period they also figured out some rules. In the morning they would go fishing in deeper waters, and in the afternoon they would go fishing in shallower waters. They would catch more fish by fishing with the wind and the current.
After Li Changle took over, Wang Xincheng carried a basket full of steamed buns and a few crabs with broken claws to the kitchen to cook seafood porridge.
Grandma Chen fried a jar full of meat sauce for them using bean paste, dried shrimps, shallots and minced meat. It was perfect to eat with porridge or steamed buns.
Wang Xincheng felt that the food on the boat was better than at home during the holidays. They wished they could go out to sea every day, as the days passed quickly and excitingly.
Brother Li drove the boat to the west, and Li Changle and others started fishing from west to northeast. After a group of fishing lines were lowered, they used buoy flags tied with red flags to mark the fishing locations.
This time I brought ten sets of fishing ropes and five hundred hooks, adding to the previous ones, a total of one thousand hooks. If it is the same as before, with an average fish catching rate of 60 to 70%, there will be a catch of over a thousand kilograms of fish.
Brother Li steered the fishing boat slowly toward the northeast. At this time, Chen Amao's voice came from the walkie-talkie.
"Boss Ale, have you guys gone out to sea?"
"Boss Chen, where are you now? We went out to sea at high tide last night, and are currently setting longlines at Turtle Island."
"I just passed Dazhu Mountain. Is the fishing situation good?"
"The fishing situation is good. I caught two nets in a row and both were broken."
"Great, we'll meet at Turtle Island."
"Okay!" Brother Li turned off the intercom and saw Li Changle waving at him, "Have you put out all the fishing lines?"
"Okay!" Li Changle nodded and gestured to him to come down to eat.
As soon as Brother Li came out of the cab, Wang Xincheng and Wang Jie came out with breakfast.
Li Changle smelled the delicious aroma of rice porridge and his stomach started to growl.
The steamed buns I ate last night were completely digested after more than three hours and two hours of fishing this morning.
Pick up a big meat bun with thin skin and big filling, take a big bite, have two mouthfuls of salty and fragrant meat sauce, and then have a few mouthfuls of hot seafood porridge. With money to earn and delicious food to eat, life is really comfortable.
The only drawback is the intermittent rest, which really affects the quality of sleep. I always feel like I haven’t gotten enough sleep.
A full pot of seafood porridge, a dozen big meat buns, and a bowl of meat sauce were all eaten up by the six people. Each of them had a bulging belly, looking so satisfied that they didn't want to move.
"Come on, have a whole bunch of magical cigarettes!"
Li Changle took out a cigarette and gave one to a few people. Wang Xincheng and Wang Jie waved their hands quickly, stood up, cleaned up the dishes and went back to the kitchen to clean up.
Brother Li stood up with a cigarette in his mouth, "Brother, go get some sleep, I'll drive the boat."
Brother Li had only slept for three hours from yesterday till now, and now he felt tired. "Okay, put the trawl down, and I'll go to sleep."
Brother Li nodded and looked at Li Changle, "Ah Le, which way are you going?"
"Continue heading east-northeast."
"Okay!" Brother Li went to the cab and started the fishing boat, slowly moving forward. Li Changle and others lowered the trawl net into the sea and went back to sleep.
Two hours later, the voice of Li Erge was heard from the loudspeaker. Several people got out of bed and quickly took their positions.
Standing on the deck, they discovered that there were three white dolphins, two large and one small, swimming around the fishing boat. Wang Xincheng and Wang Jie looked at the whimpering dolphins with curiosity.
"Uncle Awei, what kind of sea beast is that?"
Chen Yongwei turned his head and took a look. "Dolphins, don't underestimate them because they are sea beasts. They are very smart! They can even catch pufferfish and play with them as balls."
Wang Xincheng and Wang Jie turned their heads with curiosity, looking at the dolphins swimming around the fishing boat in the sea. "They are surrounding our boat. Do they also want Uncle A-Le to feed them fish?"
"The fish haven't been pulled up yet! Feed them when they are."
Li Changle didn't expect that he could see the sea-cry monster, which is as famous as the giant panda and is known as the "mermaid" and "water giant panda".
He looked at the two big white dolphins and thought their calls were similar to the last time Huzi came to them to rescue Dahuzi. He walked to the side of the boat and shouted to a big white dolphin, "Little white brother, wait until we pull up the net. If you really want to help, take us with you!"
Several dolphins seemed to be even more anxious, and their cries became sharper and sharper. It might be because the fishermen here never catch dolphins, so they were so anxious that they circled around the fishing boats but did not make any move to attack them.
At this time, the net bag had been pulled onto the deck. Brother Li loudly called out to Li Changle and others to return to their posts. Chen Yongwei quickly tied the net bag and hung it on the crane arm. After the net bag was hoisted up, a whimpering sound suddenly came from inside.
“Shit! No wonder those whitebait refused to leave. It turns out some of them were caught in the net.” Li Changle said as he ran to the side of the boat. “Don’t worry, I’ll release the little guys and return them to you right away.”
Oddly enough, the white dolphins seemed to understand what he meant and did not look as anxious as before.
Wang Xincheng quickly untied the net bag, and a gray little sea beast with a pointed beak, along with the fish, shrimps and crabs, rushed out of the net bag.
As soon as the little fellow was freed, he picked up a large mackerel and ate it with relish.
Wang Xincheng and Wang Jie were so scared that they quickly stepped aside, "Uncle A Le, there really is a little dolphin in there."
"Why doesn't it look like a dolphin in the sea?"
"This is a baby dolphin. When it grows up, it will be like the big dolphins in the sea."
The pink color on the white dolphin is not caused by pigment, but by the blood vessels under the epidermis.
Newly born white dolphins are about 1 meter long and have lead-gray skin, which gradually fades from gray to pink as they grow up.
Adult white dolphins have white or pink skin, can be up to 2.7 meters long, and weigh 200 to 250 kilograms.
Li Changle walked forward and touched its round head, and found that the little guy was not small, at least one meter long, with a round and gray body, which was nothing like the pink and round white dolphins in the sea.
It would be great if I had a camera so I could take a photo with it and bring it back to show Anan and my two sons.
"Brother, you are not as strong as me, let me hold it!" Chen Yongwei picked up the white dolphin, walked to the side of the boat, bent his body and released it back into the sea.
Li Changle pointed at the little fellow who was snuggling closely beside a big dolphin and said, "Don't run around in the future. There are also evil-minded fishermen. Be careful that they will catch you."
The next moment something shocking happened: the big white dolphin nodded at him.
Chen Yongwei excitedly grabbed Li Changle and said, "Brother, look, its mother nodded at you."
"A Le, give them something to eat." Brother Li walked to the side of the boat carrying a bucket of fish, which contained bluefin mullets, pike, and other miscellaneous fish.
Since Hu Zi sent the fish, Brother Li and Brother Li II have also become more active in feeding dolphins and killer whales.
I don't know when Brother Li ran onto the deck, and everyone fed a few white dolphins together.
Several people grabbed the fish and threw them towards the dolphins. The two big sea beasts leaped up gracefully and grabbed the thrown fish in their mouths.
"They are not afraid of us at all." It was the first time for Wang Xincheng and Wang Jie to feed sea beasts, and they were as excited as children.
“They know we won’t hurt them.”
A few people fed two buckets of fish to the four white dolphins. The four white dolphins swam around the fishing boat, cried a few times at them, and swam away into the distance.
"Ah Le, I'm going to drive the boat, you guys quickly put down the trawl."
"Okay!" Li Changle and a few others cleared some of the fish on the deck, lowered the trawl into the sea, and then started to sort the fish.
Crabs and conger eels were crawling everywhere, mantis shrimps, hair shrimps, and prawns were jumping around in the fish pile, and the nine-segmented shrimps that refused to suffer any grievances had long since died.
As usual, we caught crabs and conger eels first, then sorted the fish, leaving the shrimps for last and putting them directly on the ocean scaffold.
Everyone found that there were a lot of sole fish in this ocean, and they sorted out more than ten baskets with the net. In addition to the little dolphin, the largest one was a big blue spot weighing more than 30 kilograms.
The golden pomfret, which looks rich and good-looking but is less expensive than the silver pomfret, is the most abundant. Twenty-five baskets were sorted in total. The five smallest baskets were filled with fish weighing three or four kilograms, while the others were all weighing four to five kilograms to seven to eight kilograms.
Brother Li sighed repeatedly as he caught it, "It would be great if the silver pomfret could grow this big!"
"This fish is a typical example of good-looking but useless. It tastes a little better when fresh, but even the sun-dried bream head cannot be sold at a high price."
"The small ones can be sold for 1.23 yuan per pound, which is better than water shrimp and mantis shrimp."
Li Changle remembered that in later generations, some people rented islands to raise golden pomfret. The big ones weighed more than ten or twenty kilograms, but the quality and taste of the meat were much worse than those of wild ones.
After working for more than an hour, they finally sorted out all the fish. There were two baskets of octopus and more than ten cuttlefish.
There were so many small yellow croakers that they were sorted into eleven baskets. The small ones weighed four or five taels, the big ones weighed six or seven taels, and some of them weighed nearly a pound.
Li Changle grabbed a small yellow croaker that weighed nearly 150 grams. "What a pity for these small yellow croakers. If we had caught them last night, they would have looked so good!"
"They're all for drying in the sun anyway, so what's the difference between what we catch during the day and at night!" After saying that, Chen Yongwei picked up a basket of sole, piled it on a bamboo basket, and pushed it towards the entrance of the cargo hold.
The sun was scorching. Brother Li and Chen Yongwei went down to the cargo hold to load the cargo. Li Changle and the other two quickly sent the bamboo baskets down.
(End of this chapter)