I Can Fish Up Everything!

Chapter 310: Chapter 206: Hiring Another Fish Filleter (2)

The fishing boat sped across the surface of the sea as Gu Nan contemplated where to fish that night.

Spots with fewer boats were usually the ones with poorer resources.

He primarily used his daily attempts to build up his inventory, so he didn’t need to worry too much about whether there were actually fish in the water.

Gu Nan planned to try and catch a King-level or higher blue Large-spot Grouper tonight. Although Sea King’s friend wasn’t in a hurry, it was obviously better to catch it early and keep it in the aquarium.

That way, he could pull it out whenever it was needed and wouldn’t have to scramble to go on a special trip for that particular fish later.

Gu Nan occasionally fished for marlin as well, but he generally didn’t use his daily attempts on them, lest he catch one that was too big and exhaust himself.

The Japanese restaurant only ordered about three to four hundred pounds a week, and he typically made one shipment per week.

He currently had three fish approaching four hundred pounds each in his chilled warehouse, so there was no need to rush.

After traveling for about twelve nautical miles, Gu Nan stumbled upon a decent fishing spot.

There were no isolated islands or reefs in sight. The waters he’d been crossing were consistently about a hundred meters deep.

It wasn’t deep enough to fish for the elite boss from the Seven-Star Rock map, but he could fish for anything else.

Gu Nan had accumulated a good number of Dogtooth Fish in his chilled warehouse. While none were exceptionally large, they averaged around seventy to eighty centimeters, which was more than enough for selling in the shop.

In practice, they were sold as pre-sliced, packaged portions, and the weekly sales volume was only average.

The fish was very popular, but since Gu Nan didn’t have an online store, it was naturally difficult to boost sales.

There was a reason why brick-and-mortar shops were being crushed by online stores. Fortunately for him, his main customers were restaurants.

The restaurants didn’t buy pre-sliced packages; they wanted whole fish.

The price for a whole fish was a bit cheaper. Plus, Gu Nan would offer discounts for large orders or to established clients, so restaurants bought up most of his stock.

His catch volume was limited, so he couldn’t have opened an online store even if he’d wanted to.

Gu Nan had never considered importing from abroad to scale up his business, either.

When it came to running a seafood shop, he had a massive, cheat-like advantage that other shops would find nearly impossible to compete against.

But scaling up would mean becoming a large-scale seafood distributor or even a fishing company. Gu Nan wasn’t confident he could compete with entities of that size.

’It’s better to just fish in comfort. Earning hundreds of thousands to a million a month is already a great life. Why would I kill myself working that hard?!’

After anchoring the boat, Gu Nan checked the time. It was almost 8:30 PM, which was considered the best time of day for fishing.

The water was deep here. The fish finder showed a depth of over one hundred twenty meters, and the fish were mostly concentrated at the bottom, so he would have to bottom fish.

Gu Nan wasn’t going to bother with local fish today. In fact, unless he ran into a large school, he didn’t have much interest in fishing in domestic waters.

The haul was just so much worse compared to what he got in the game. It was like eating a gourmet meal every day; you could have some coarse grains once in a while, but you couldn’t make a habit of it.

Gu Nan took out his two electric reel rods. When fishing for fish from the game maps, he always used the automatic reels.

He tied his rigs, stuffed some Antarctic krill into the bait cages, and then attached lures.

The bait cages weren’t necessary when using his "guaranteed catch" attempts, but he would need them afterward. Putting them in early would attract fish to the area, so he could seamlessly continue fishing once his attempts were used up.

With the rig ready, Gu Nan walked to the gunwale and cast the lure into the water.

The weight of the lead sinker pulled the baited hook quickly to the seabed.

Only when the rig hit the bottom did Gu Nan activate his daily guaranteed catches. A little over ten seconds later, both rods jolted almost simultaneously, signaling a bite.

The struggling force was immense, as always. The golden fishing rod had such a huge bonus that it never caught small or medium-sized fish.

Gu Nan primarily sold these large fish to restaurants and hotels. By now, almost every mid-to-high-end restaurant in Bazhou City was ordering from him.

Every morning, Gu Dacheng had to drive into the city to make a round of deliveries.

These restaurants didn’t even send purchasing agents; the ones who came to the shop to place orders were either the owners or the head chefs themselves.

Consequently, their orders weren’t large—just one or two fish at a time. The price for delivery was naturally a bit higher, and he basically sold to them at market price.

Only for clients with large order volumes, like Junhao Hotel, would Gu Nan offer a wholesale price, and they would arrange for their own vehicle to pick up the order.

That’s why after using up his daily attempts, he still had to continue with regular fishing to catch some smaller fish for individual sale at his shop.

Regular customers bought fish to cook at home, so they didn’t need the seafood to be excessively large.

Gu Nan pressed a button on the electric reel, and it began to automatically retrieve the line.

After a short while, a Tiger Stripes measuring eighty centimeters and an Australian Flower Dragon of about the same length appeared on the surface.

Gu Nan brought the lobster up first. It was lighter, so the retrieval was faster.

He removed the lure, stored the lobster in the aquarium, and then cast the lure back into the water, letting out the line. Only then did he grab the landing net and scoop up the Tiger Stripes.

By staggering them one after the other, he now had absolutely no downtime.

He was averaging a fish every two to five minutes. With two rods, that amounted to forty or fifty fish per hour.

He had a total of three hundred and fifty daily attempts. By the time Gu Nan had used them all up, it was already a little past four in the morning.

’It’s late enough to go to sleep,’ he thought, ’but I still need to catch some fish from the local waters. Catching only a few fish can be written off as a bad day, but coming back empty-handed? Wouldn’t that be a complete disgrace?’

So, Gu Nan closed the game map and set his two electric reel rods to start fishing normally for deep-sea fish.

He hadn’t used his weekly beachcombing attempts yet, either. He decided that after catching a few more fish, he’d go to the game map for some beachcombing, then come out, get some sleep, and head back home in the afternoon.

Since there was still some time, Gu Nan decided to take out his Bering Sea fishing rod and see what new fish he could unlock today.

He baited the hook with shrimp he’d bought the previous night before setting out. For the regular fishing, he also swapped the lures on his two electric reel rods for live shrimp to increase the hook-up rate.

After a short wait, the rod tip twitched slightly. A fish was on the line.

Gu Nan lifted the rod to set the hook, but it felt surprisingly light. The fish was clearly very small.

A little disappointed, he still quickly reeled it in, pulling the fish straight up from the depths with almost no resistance.

Soon, a small, fiery-red fish was pulled up. It looked like some kind of rockfish.

For a moment, Gu Nan wasn’t sure if it was a local fish or one from the game map.

The fish was only about twenty-five centimeters long; he wasn’t even sure it weighed a pound.

Gu Nan grabbed the line and lifted the fish. As it came out of the water, the fish flared its fins, and a black spot on its dorsal fin was especially striking.

He had been about to use his appraisal function to see what kind of fish it was, but the moment he saw that black spot, he no longer needed to guess. It was clearly a Hokkaido Fish.

Many people might not recognize that name, but they would almost certainly recognize it by its other name: Kichiji.

This was the same fish Japanese restaurants skewered and grilled over charcoal. In high-end establishments, one weighing around a pound could sell for 998 yuan.

Even at Zhao Jie’s mid-range Japanese restaurant, one could sell for 799 yuan.

He had even asked Gu Nan before if he had this type of fish, wanting to source it from him. Apparently, it sold quite well at his restaurant.

Gu Nan had refused at the time. He never expected that, by a twist of fate, he would end up catching one today.

Kichiji were found in the North Pacific Ocean, so of course, they were also in the Bering Sea.

Unfortunately, Gu Nan didn’t know how many he could catch with his blue-rarity Bering Sea rod. The efficiency certainly couldn’t compare to his golden rod.

’I suddenly remembered the collection quest,’ Gu Nan thought. ’After more than three hundred catches tonight, the collection quest should be just about finished.’

He opened his Collection to check, and sure enough, the previously incomplete entry for the Legendary Australian Giant Flower Dragon had been successfully filled tonight.

All that remained was the Legendary Dogtooth Fish. But he was about to head out to the far seas and wouldn’t have time to fish on the game maps.

’Once I get back, I’ll take care of the Legendary Dogtooth Fish, enter the Trial Tower, and get that golden fishing rod.’

Closing the game interface, Gu Nan saw the rod next to him twitch. He quickly went over to press the retrieve button, then went back to fishing.

His luck was pretty good; he’d run into a school of Kichiji. Even though the catch rate wasn’t high, by dawn, he had managed to land thirty-seven of them.

His other two electric reel rods had also brought in about fifty deep-sea fish, which was more than enough to justify the trip. So, Gu Nan stowed his rods in the cabin, went to his bunk, lay down, and entered the beachcombing map.