Chapter 360 - 239: Thousand-Year-Old Demon, Thousand-Year-Old Fish
Chapter 360: Chapter 239: Thousand-Year-Old Demon, Thousand-Year-Old Fish
Gu Nan was still fishing from the port side of the boat. However, considering the school of fish had moved to a depth of sixty or seventy meters, he didn’t use his electric reel.
Yi Chen had one electric reel rod, and she was also in control of the livestream camera.
She was in charge of filming the livestream while fishing at the same time.
Although the waves were a bit rough here, causing the fishing boat to rock and sway slowly, the tripod was very stable, so she could handle it all just fine.
[You’re finally live! Do you have any idea how I’ve survived this past month?]
[Not cool, streamer. Sneaking off to catch tuna without telling us.]
[I’m really curious what the streamer’s going to catch this time.]
As soon as the stream went live, the chat room exploded with activity.
There were only a few thousand people, but everyone was eager to comment, so the bullet comments flew across the screen.
A crowd of fishing fanatics—who either had no time to fish or kept getting skunked—could only come to Gu Nan’s stream to get their fix by watching.
The school was in the mid-water column, and with the fast current, simply throwing out chum wouldn’t work. So, Gu Nan used a bait cage filled with chopped-up small squid.
There was more than enough chum on the boat, so they could use it freely.
He was using live shrimp for bait; if they didn’t use them now, they’d probably all be dead by tomorrow or the day after.
The live shrimp they’d bought wouldn’t last long, even with the livewell being oxygenated.
The first cast usually required some waiting. Gu Nan set his boat rod in a holder, which made fishing easier and worked well for both large and small fish.
But according to the icons on the fish finder, the school below was made up of fish around three to four pounds, five pounds at most. To him, they were a school of small fish.
The sea breeze whooshed past, but everyone was dressed warmly enough that the wind actually felt rather pleasant.
It wasn’t winter yet, so the sea breeze wasn’t the kind of bone-chilling cold that cut right through you.
Gu Nan baited his hook with a live shrimp, dropped it into the water, and waited quietly. After more than two minutes on his first cast, the rod began to twitch up and down.
A fish was nibbling the bait, and his attention instantly sharpened.
Gu Nan reached out and grabbed the rod, ready to set the hook at any moment. A short while later, the rod tip slowly bent downward, and the line gradually tightened—the fish was running with the bait.
It was time. He gripped the body of the rod and jerked it upward. He immediately felt a distinct pull—the hook was set. Then he began reeling in the line quickly.
The chat, which had been quiet for a moment, erupted again at the sight.
[Here he goes, here he goes! He’s about to enter non-stop-catch mode!]
[Newbie here, is sea fishing always this easy? How did he get a bite so fast?]
[If you find a school of fish, sea fishing is non-stop action. It’s way more satisfying than fishing in wild rivers or reservoirs.]
[Uh, looks like I need to get a boat and go sea fishing too.]
[Holy shit, I thought he was a newbie, but he’s a pro! Hey, pro, you need a deckhand? Take me with you!]
[Deckhand +1...]
[Deckhand +2...]
[Deckhand +999...]
Reeling in a fish from sixty meters deep didn’t take too long. After a short while, a plain-looking black fish with no distinguishing features appeared on the surface.
It looked to be around forty centimeters long and weighed an estimated three to four pounds. Instead of just grabbing the line and pulling it up, Gu Nan used a landing net.
Since he didn’t recognize the fish, he used his appraisal function so he could explain what it was to the livestream audience and everyone else on the boat later.
And sure enough, just as he finished reading the description, Yi Chen pointed the camera at the netted fish and asked, "Ah Nan, what kind of fish is this?"
"Yeah, what is it? It’s all black and plain, looks like it’s not worth much," Ye Jing said. He had just caught the same kind of fish and walked over to Gu Nan, holding it up.
Gu Nan switched on the microphone clipped to his collar and began to explain, "Seasoned foodies or friends who’ve done deep-sea fishing before might recognize this fish. It’s called the Pacific New Perch, also known as the Black Perch. It’s a high-end fish commonly used in Japanese restaurants."
"It’s a relatively rare fish that you don’t see on the market very often. The price isn’t exceptionally high, currently around 150 yuan per pound."
"Black Perch usually live in the deep sea. Their habitat ranges from sixty to five hundred meters below the surface."
"But we’re lucky today; we’ve run into a whole school of Black Perch."
A fish that costs 150 yuan per pound is definitely not cheap. Moreover, this school wasn’t small; the average fish weighed three to four pounds, making each one worth at least 500 yuan or so.
Hearing this price, everyone’s enthusiasm surged. It was another chance to practically pick up money off the ground.
The chat was filled with envy and jealousy. Black Perch! Any fish with "perch" in its name was a high-end species.
After the brief lesson, Gu Nan tossed the fish into a storage box and went back to focusing on his fishing.
That last fish hadn’t swallowed the hook too deeply. He pulled the live shrimp out of its stomach perfectly intact, though the live shrimp was now a dead shrimp. It was still usable, so Gu Nan immediately tossed the baited hook back into the water.
This time, he got a bite much faster. The baited hook had just reached the mid-water column when a fish hit.
The situation was slightly different from before. The fish took the bait much more aggressively and immediately started running with the line. However, the fish still wasn’t very big, as the rod only bent slightly with a mild reaction.
Gu Nan lifted his rod, set the hook, and immediately started pulling the line back in.
This fish only had an aggressive bite; the fight it put up was just so-so.
Soon, the fish was pulled to the surface. It was another Black Perch, but a size larger than the last one—easily five pounds.
Great luck. He’d caught the big boss of the school. He used the landing net again to bring it in.
Beside him, Yi Chen’s electric reel rod finally showed some action. It seemed the bait had successfully concentrated the scattered fish from the seafloor.
Because the fish were biting so aggressively, the shrimp bait was mangled. Gu Nan had no choice but to re-bait with a fresh live shrimp. After finally stumbling upon a school of Black Perch, it would be a huge waste not to fish all night, given how rare they were.