Chapter 174

"It's born just like that? So fast?"

"That porpoise calf doesn't look small either, it's quite big."

"It should be about 70 centimeters, that belly can really hold a lot."

Just then, the porpoise tilted its body slightly to one side, exposing one of its flippers, while the calf clung tightly to the female's belly.

"Is it nursing?"

"Is this something we should be watching? Let's go, let's go. I need to retrieve my lines, don't get in my way here."

Since he couldn't catch it anyway, after watching the process, Ye Yaodong had to retrieve his lines. They had been down for a long time, and since it was his first time using them, he didn't know what he would catch.

"I'll watch you collect your catch. Anyway, since we're idle, we just collected some good stuff earlier. There were actually two super-large eels, each over ten jin. Good heavens, I don't even know how they grew that big." Azheng said while rowing the boat to the side to avoid getting in the way of his line retrieval.

"500 hooks, how much did you collect?"

"A little over a hundred jin. We caught everything, just not as good as the catch from the past two days. Nothing particularly valuable, but it's not bad either. The weight is there, and the speed of catching is not slow. We bait while retrieving, and we'll go collect another round later. We won't go home for lunch."

"Hmm."

Ye Yaodong pulled up the anchor he had just thrown back into the sea and started retrieving the line.

Before the fish even surfaced, he could already see clearly that it was a festive, large red sea bream.

"Red and prosperous, a good start. This sea bream is good!"

"It looks like it must be three jin, right?"

"About that." Ye Yaodong was very satisfied and continued to retrieve the line.

"Hey~ it's a barracuda. The second one is a barracuda, not bad."

The barracuda is scientifically known as Sphyraena. It has a long, narrow body that can grow up to 1.8 meters. Because it has sharp, protruding teeth like a wolf's, the locals call it the barracuda.

"Hmm, this one is seven or eight jin. Did you catch any earlier?"

"We caught over a dozen, but none this big, only about two or three jin."

He took the barracuda off, killed it, and threw it directly onto the boat. The bucket was already filled with the catch from the ground cages, so there wasn't much space left. He then baited the hook and continued to retrieve the line.

At this moment, the porpoise was carrying its calf, swimming on the sea surface. The calf's head, neck, and belly were pressed tightly against the female's back as it lay diagonally. Before long, the large and small pair dived directly back into the sea.

Ye Yaodong glanced at them and went back to retrieving his own lines. The third catch was a 5-6 jin 'silly' fish. He threw it onto the boat with disdain and incidentally re-baited the hook.

Today's waves were undercurrents, and the entire small boat was swaying continuously.

He retrieved the lines one after another, but there was no special, good catch. This area of the sea was not far from the shore, and the fish caught were always the same. From time to time, there were empty hooks where the bait had been eaten and the fish had escaped.

His hands were going numb from retrieving the lines until he suddenly pulled on a heavy object, and it was still tugging at the fishing line. He instantly perked up and pulled with all his might.

Azheng and Hearing Xiao Xiao nearby had long since become bored and started fishing. Seeing him struggling to pull the line there, they also felt he had caught something big and took a look.

"Good heavens, it's a super-large stingray."

"You're really lucky."

Ye Yaodong had no time to chat with them. He held the fishing line with one hand and picked up the small knife he kept on the boat with the other, preparing to cut off the stingray's tail. However, he missed with his first cut.

The tail of this kind of stingray is highly poisonous and can send you to heaven or hell in minutes. Generally, the first thing people do when catching a stingray is to cut off its tail.

He had only recently put the small knife on the boat because he thought it would be convenient to cut fish meat for bait while fishing. He also made some small tools because every time he caught a big fish, it was quite strenuous to pull it up, and having some small tools to help could save a lot of trouble.

Ye Yaodong immediately picked up a homemade wooden stick hook and hooked the stingray to the side of the boat. Who knew this fish had a very irritable temper and even spat at Ye Yaodong.

He missed the hook again. He wiped the water off his cheek and cursed, "Damn... wait until I see how I kill you later."

"Wow, this one is fierce, it has quite a temper!" Azheng and Hearing Xiao Xiao watched leisurely, commenting from time to time, watching with great interest.

The stingray is the largest variety of ray. Generally, rays can grow up to 2.5 meters, while the largest stingrays exceed 7 meters and are highly aggressive.

Ye Yaodong aimed carefully and hooked it again. This time he hooked the tail, and he picked up the small knife again to cut it, but the fish struggled violently, and he failed again.

It was truly infuriating, so he had no choice but to pull it up first.

He pulled the rope upward with force a few more times, and after aiming, he hooked his two hands into the stingray's nostrils, used all his strength, pulled it up, and threw it onto the boat.

"Good heavens, it actually takes up nearly half the boat. The diameter is over a meter! It's worth quite a bit of money."

"No wonder you were pulling so strenuously."

Ye Yaodong cursed with joy, "My back is about to break."

After saying that, he stepped on its tail with his foot, struggled to cut it off with the small knife, threw it back into the sea, and incidentally re-baited the hook. But while baiting, he noticed a connection on the branch line.

He had set a total of 300 hooks, three of which used small squid as bait, hung on the last hook of each basket of fishing line.

He recognized the knot he had tied; this connection seemed to be where two baskets of fishing line joined. This large stingray must have been caught using the small squid as bait.

Thinking about it, he took off the small shrimp again, fished a small squid out of the bucket, and hung it on. Only with large bait can you catch large fish, though it's easy to have the bait stolen.

Azheng and Hearing Xiao Xiao were also surprised by his actions and asked one after another, "You used small squid as bait?"

"Yeah, I hung three to try it out. This large stingray must have been caught by the small squid."

"Ah? If we had known, we would have taken a few large baits to try too."

"You can try later. It's just that since we're not far from the shore, there might be fewer big fish, and it's easy to come up empty."

Ye Yaodong said while continuing to retrieve the line. A two-jin black sea bream came up. This fish was quite impatient and had actually drowned itself.

A fish's respiratory organ is its gills, which filter oxygen from the water. Its gills had problems during the struggle, and the fish drowned.

He didn't stop for a moment and pulled the main line again, resulting in five or six barracudas being pulled up one after another, but they weren't that big, only about two or three jin.

After watching for a while, Azheng and the others rowed their boat toward the location where they had previously set their longlines. They had been here for a long time, and it was time to go back and retrieve their lines.

Ye Yaodong's hands were numb from continuously catching fish.

But the next movement surprised him again. He looked at the fishing line and saw another connection; this hook also used small squid as bait.

He pulled it casually and felt it was particularly heavy, knowing there was another big fish. He didn't know if it was a high-quality fish, but the weight was definitely heavy.

This big fish was also very fierce, splashing a lot of waves on the sea surface. Ye Yaodong struggled to pull it out of the water. Good heavens, it was a large Spanish mackerel.

That was also fine; this fish wasn't bad either. The key was that it was big.

He held the main line with one hand, turned his head to pick up a wooden stick hook on the boat, found the right opportunity, and hooked it directly at the fish's head, pulling it onto the deck and placing it next to the barracuda.

He felt this wooden stick hook was quite useful. It was quite strenuous to pull a big fish up with a thin fishing line, but having this hook saved a lot of trouble. He didn't even need to kill it specifically; it would be dead by the time he pulled it ashore.

Both fish had long, narrow bodies. Placed together, one could clearly see that this large Spanish mackerel was a section longer and a circle larger than the barracuda.

When he pulled it up, he felt its weight and estimated it should be over 20 jin, worth about 6-7 yuan.

It would be a bit worse than that stingray, but it was still not bad.

The small wooden boat couldn't go to waters too far away. In waters too close, there were fewer big fish, and catching them depended entirely on luck.

Having these two fish already exceeded the minimum guarantee. Although other fish were cheaper, they couldn't resist the quantity and weight. Adding them together was also quite considerable.

Moreover, these longline hooks could be re-baited after each collection. It took quite a bit of time to collect from beginning to end, and after collecting, he could continue again in a while.

Both small squids brought him surprises, and he also faintly looked forward to whether he would catch another big fish with the last one.

But he was disappointed. When he pulled to the last branch line, it was light and airy. He knew there was no catch without looking. When he pulled it up, the small squid was still there.

Then there was no need to re-bait, just throw it back into the sea.

After collecting everything, Ye Yaodong clapped his hands and wanted to find an empty space on the boat to sit down, but found there wasn't much space left on the boat.

After collecting one round of 300 hooks, both buckets were full and couldn't hold any more. There was already the catch from the ground cages inside, so there wasn't much space to hold anything else.

Most of the fish he had just pulled up were thrown together with the barracuda and Spanish mackerel.

The stingray took up the most space, and there were other tools on the boat.

He kicked the tools into a corner, sat down to rest for a while, drank some tea, and prepared to collect the catch again in an hour. There were quite a lot of empty hooks just now, accounting for more than two-thirds.

It was still too close to the shore. If only he could get a larger iron-hulled boat sooner.

While thinking, he felt something pass over his head. A shadow covered him, and another black shadow flashed by. He looked up in confusion and was startled.

"Damn, such a big stingray?"

It was a flying stingray, flying in the air about 2 meters above the sea surface...

"Slap~"

A loud noise erupted from the water surface, like a cannon shot, affecting several miles and splashing a huge amount of water, drenching him from head to toe.

This was the loud bang made by the stingray hitting the water. The scene was beautiful and spectacular, but it wasn't very friendly to him!

He wiped the water off his face. This was the second time he had been splashed in the face by a stingray. Is it easy for him to catch a fish? Did it have to retaliate against him like this?

Just as he was about to curse a few times, he saw it rising in the sea with a rotating swimming posture. As it approached the sea surface, its rotation speed and swimming speed kept increasing until it leaped out of the water, accompanied by a beautiful somersault.

Ye Yaodong was stunned. This was his second time seeing it; he had also seen it in his previous life at sea.

The diameter of this stingray was estimated to be over three meters.

Before he could recover, this huge stingray flew toward his small boat.

Ye Yaodong's pupils constricted, thinking it was going to pounce directly and fan him with its wings.

Its "pair of wings" was not something an ordinary person could withstand.

When a stingray gets angry, it only needs to flap its powerful "double wings" to break a person's bones and cause death.

His small frame couldn't withstand that...

He reacted quickly and agilely lay down, hoping to avoid this strike. But he didn't expect the fish to bypass him, hook itself onto the anchor chain of the small boat with its head fins, and then drag the small boat running fast on the sea.

The sudden rapid forward movement made him sway so much that he almost rolled off the small wooden boat. Fortunately, he was quick-eyed and fast-handed, gripping the gunwale tightly and stabilizing his swaying body.

"Holy crap... ah ah ah... are you retaliating against me?"

"Ah ah ah~ stop, stop~"

The stingray couldn't understand human language. The weight of the small wooden boat was nothing to it. It dragged the boat and continued to travel fast on the sea.