The Top Fishing
Chapter 378 - 191: Departure to the High Seas_2

Chapter 378: Chapter 191: Departure to the High Seas_2

In our country, it seems that everyone is very interested in the word "nourish."

When Lin Yang said that this dish was very nourishing, everyone around became very interested, after all, no one would refuse something that’s nourishing.

Soon, as the Big Green Crab and Blood Eel soup were ready, the group of five began to eat their lunch for the day.

Today’s lunch consisted not only of the nourishing Blood Eel, but Green Crab was also a very nice ingredient.

Green Crab is different from river crab; river crab is fattest during just those two months of the year, around the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival on the lunar calendar. But the fattening time for Green Crab, or sea crab, is different.

Green Crab, found from Shandong in the north to Hainan in the south, has varying seasons of peak fattiness. In fact, from February to October every year is the season when Green Crabs are most succulent; it just depends on where you eat them.

For instance, at this moment in Peng City, the Green Crabs are very plump, with flesh that’s basically full, and the crab roe and cream are also essentially filled to the brim, even though they’re not overflowing to the point of bursting. However, for most crabs, this is considered quite full.

The more than ten Big Green Crabs Lin Yang and his friends had today were finished in no time, and the Blood Eel soup was soon over as well.

After lunch, the group cleaned up and then discussed going out to the deep sea for proper fishing in the afternoon.

They had already been at sea for two days, but so far had not caught any big sea fish, so they needed to venture farther out.

Lin Yang picked a sea area not too far from their current position, where it was noted that quite a few Marlins lurked. Up to now, Lin Yang himself had not yet caught a Marlin, so seeing the location marked, he was somewhat excited.

Upon hearing that they would be fishing for Marlins, Wang Feng and the others immediately became excited. Marlin is a colloquial name for Big Marlin, and fishing for this mighty fish is a challenge many anglers aim for.

After deciding, they didn’t rest much but immediately set sail at full speed towards the target area.

....

After more than two hours of swift travel, they had now reached the originally designated sea area.

As the boat slowed, everyone began making preparations for fishing.

But before they started fishing, Lin Yang and Wang Feng were both setting up the live streaming equipment. They both used to live stream in the past, only having done so less frequently recently due to various reasons. Now, out on international waters, of course, they wanted to live stream.

However, this time their methods of streaming were different: Wang Feng used a camera handled by his assistant Xiao Zhang, while Lin Yang chose to fly a drone.

The two virtually started streaming at the same time.

Once the live streams commenced, the viewers were not surprised to see Lin Yang and Wang Feng together because many of them already knew the two were acquainted.

"Wow, I’ve finally waited for the host to start streaming, it’s been tough!"

"Don’t be lazy, host, you should live stream more often, I’d even love to watch if you’re just fishing for small mixed fish."

"Master Lin is actually with Master Wang, and it looks like they are at sea together."

"The host is preparing to fish for big Marlins...."

As the two opened their live streams, plenty of people flocked in, sending bullet comments.

Meanwhile, Lin Yang and his friends were also busy getting their fishing gear ready while laughing and interacting with the viewers in the live stream.

Wang Feng had promoted this offshore Marlin fishing trip on his stream two hours before starting, so many viewers knew what they would be fishing for as soon as they entered the stream.

After greeting the viewers, everyone quickly finished setting up their fishing gear.

Sure, the different lines and hooks used by the group varied; Lin Yang and Wang Feng used larger setups in anticipation of catching big fish, whereas Yue’er and Li Xiaopeng certainly couldn’t catch marlins, so they had to settle for other types of sea fish.

However, Lin Yang didn’t immediately start casting with the big sea rod. He took out another rod, planning to catch some sardines first, which he would naturally use as bait.

The fish in deep sea are very foolish, incredibly so. For anglers, catching deep sea fish, such as sardines and skipjack tuna, is very easy.

Because these fish have never seen hooks and baits in their lives, they will bite as soon as they sense fish nearby, and there’s absolutely no trick to it at all; biting means a sure catch.

Lin Yang specifically used a sabiki rig, allowing him to catch five or six at a time; the smaller ones were around six or seven centimeters, while the larger ones could reach over ten centimeters in length.

In less than ten minutes, he had caught fifty to sixty fish, an extremely quick haul.

If it weren’t for the fact that sardines themselves were especially cheap and that coming to deep sea was too oil-consuming, they might have wanted to fish for these to sell.

After Lin Yang had caught a good amount of sardines, Wang Feng and the others also began to make "nest bait," which essentially meant cutting up the caught sardines into pieces and tossing them into the sea to lure larger fish, and then hanging live sardines underwater as bait.

After they started fishing, although Lin Yang and Wang Feng’s target was the marlin, the fish they caught didn’t quite match their target.

The first to catch a fish was naturally Lin Yang. The first big fish he caught was a big mackerel, also referred to as Mian Fish by some. However, they aren’t exactly the same species; they belong to the same family but different genera. Ordinary people don’t need to remember this so precisely.

In their natural environment, fish generally have specialized colors and patterns or body colors that blend in with their surroundings to camouflage themselves, confuse their enemies or prey, in order to protect themselves or ambush their prey.

Mackerel, living in the upper layer of the ocean, have a dark colored body top—usually blue-black, dark blue, or dark green—while their underbellies are lighter, silver-white, white, or light yellow-white; this coloration is known as countershading.

If you look from above, the fish’s back blends in with the color of the sea water under natural light, making it difficult to differentiate the fish even if it’s close.

And from below, the underside of the fish blends with the color of the water surface and the sky, making it even harder to distinguish.

Mackerel have a very delicious taste and are highly sought after by gourmets in the coastal areas, referred to as "Chuanwu." There’s even a saying in some coastal cities: "Skipjack mouth, mackerel tail."

Due to the scarcity of wild mackerel, their price is correspondingly high; a wild mackerel weighing about ten to twenty pounds can easily sell for over a thousand yuan, although mackerel have now been cultivated as well.

The mackerel Lin Yang caught weighed about 15 pounds. The price of a wild mackerel ranged between 70 to 80 yuan per pound, meaning this fish was worth around 1000 yuan.

This is the wealth of the deep sea: in less than half an hour here, he had caught a fish worth a thousand yuan.

The fish struggled for less than ten minutes before he managed to land it.

Mackerel die within a few minutes out of water, even if they are put into a live fish tank, which is why it is so difficult to cultivate them.

Seeing Lin Yang catch a mackerel as his first catch, the audience in the live-stream were extremely excited.

"Wow, this is so thrilling! Watching the host play the fish, I’m itching to try it."

"That mackerel looks beautiful, imagine the body filleted, the tail pan-seared, it’s just too delicious."

After removing the hook from the fish’s mouth, Lin Yang casually threw it onto the deck to put it in the freezer later.

While waiting to rebait his hook, he checked the rewards for unlocking the mackerel in his handbook; 1000 yuan, 10 points of experience and points, ten times more valuable than those little sardines he had caught earlier.

Everyone continued fishing.

The next one to catch a fish was Li Xiaopeng, who hooked a Ghost Head Knife. As mentioned before, this fish is quite common in the open sea. The one he caught wasn’t very big but still excited him greatly, as the feel of catching this fish was fantastic. It would jump out of the water from time to time, which made the experience very thrilling.

Just a few minutes after Li Xiaopeng hooked the Ghost Head Knife but before it was on board, Wang Feng had a hit on the other side; it also appeared to be a Ghost Head Knife because the fish glinted underwater like a reflective mirror.