Chapter 258

When he arrived at the pier, he greeted A Cai, saying he would come to settle accounts when he returned later. The account for the abalone from two days ago hadn't been settled yet. He gave him a heads-up in advance so he could prepare the money.

In the middle of winter, it was rare to have many consecutive sunny days. There weren't many boats docked outside the pier, as most had already gone out.

The two largest boats docked there were A Guang's and his own. Seeing Pei Fu lying on his boat working on the engine, he steered his boat closer.

"Uncle Pei, I heard your boat's engine is having problems. What's broken?"

Before the boat even got close, Pei Fu had already heard the sound of the machine, but he didn't have time to see whose boat it was. Hearing someone call him now, he sat up and took a look.

"It's Adong. A few parts have rusted and aged. I was afraid of an accident at sea, so I didn't dare to go out today. I just went to town this morning to buy parts and am in the middle of replacing them."

"That's good then. It's good to find out and replace them in time before going out to sea. Otherwise, if the engine breaks down at sea, it would be troublesome."

"Yes, that's why I have to check before every trip out to sea. Be careful. Where are you going?"

"Going to collect some ground cages. I haven't collected them for many days."

"You're quite diligent. You've set quite a lot of nets."

He laughed twice, "It's not because I'm thinking of improving efficiency? Since I'm going out, I have to earn enough to cover the costs. Putting more types of nets on the boat is better than being unprepared."

"You set a good example in the village. Most people have started setting longline fishing gear. I heard the harvest is very good; they are all catching big fish, no small fish."

"It's alright. You can try it. You fix the machine first, I'm going out to sea too, I won't disturb you."

"Go, go."

Ye Yaodong steered the boat further out, but when he reached the sea area he was familiar with, he couldn't find his buoys!

!

"Damn, could they really have been washed away by the waves?"

He circled the surrounding sea area but didn't see his familiar buoys, only others'. He was a bit depressed and, unwilling to give up, steered toward the outer sea area, wanting to look again.

But he didn't see anything, though he did see many people working at sea.

After circling around again, he still couldn't find them. Just as he was planning to go back, he heard someone calling him. He turned his head to look for the source of the sound and saw a small wooden boat sliding toward him.

Oh, it was Zheng and Xiao Xiao.

He steered his boat toward them, and seeing how hard they were rowing, he couldn't help but say, "You guys can change boats."

Xiao Xiao shrugged, "We want to, but we lack the capital. Does Brother Dong want to sponsor us a bit?"

"How much are you short?"

Having the ambition to change to a big boat was a good thing. Helping a brother out wasn't a big deal, and it was better than lending to people who didn't know what they were doing.

"We haven't calculated yet, we just have the intention. Let's see if it's easy to buy a second-hand one first; we can't afford a new boat."

"Then you guys take your time looking. If there's a suitable one, then make a move. If it's not too much, I can still help."

"Hehe, not much, not much. If the two of us split it, it won't be much. Maybe we're just short a few hundred yuan. We need to have a boat to know exactly how much we're short."

While organizing the goods on the boat, Zheng said, "Dongzi, did you redistribute and change the location of your ground cages?"

"Ah? You saw my ground cages?" Ye Yaodong was pleasantly surprised.

"Saw them. There are two on the east side that should be yours, right? We saw your buoys when we came over this morning. Did you separate them?"

They had helped him collect them several times last month and recognized his buoys.

"No, it's because I didn't collect them due to the earthquake a few days ago. They were soaked in the sea for too long the day before yesterday, so I thought about resting for two days and told my eldest brother and second brother to come out and collect them. Who knew they couldn't find them? I had to come out and look for them myself. I didn't expect them to really be gone. I just circled around for a long time."

"We thought you were too full and separated them."

"It's just a few rows of ground cages, I'm not crazy to separate them. Let's not talk about it, I'll go over and take a look first."

It was good that he found them.

He excitedly steered the boat in the direction they pointed, but only saw two buoys in the surroundings. He couldn't care about looking anymore for the time being and planned to collect these two first.

After a round of net collection, the cages were bursting with fish and shrimp, but it was a pity that they had been left for too many days, and they were all floating with white bellies, with only a scattered few still alive.

It would take half a day to pick through them again, which was a pity, so many fish and shrimp. If he had collected them two days earlier, they wouldn't have spoiled. Who knew they would be washed here.

He didn't have time to sort them right now. He had only collected one ground cage, and he had to continue collecting and looking. He poured all the cargo into the basket, not caring whether they were dead or alive, and continued to collect the ground cages.

Every ground cage was very heavy, and there was a lot of cargo, but there really weren't many alive.

Tears streaming, a row of ground cages was collected, and only three moray eels were still alive. Some that might have just died were still fresh, but most of the fish eyes were cloudy. He flipped through a few, and the fish gills were dark red and had mucus.

These three moray eels were fierce, opening their big mouths and attacking each other in the basket.

Finally having some live ones, Ye Yaodong drew a bucket of seawater and clamped them into the bucket. Each of these was over a meter long and as thick as an adult's arm, which was quite rare.

Moray eels and conger eels are different; those with fins on their chests are conger eels, and those without fins are moray eels.

The head of a conger eel is pointed and long, while a moray eel looks like a snake, has distinct patterns on its body, has thick skin, is very fierce, has a relatively small head, and has large teeth, with two sets of sharp teeth—one set on the outside for tearing at opponents, and one set for swallowing things.

After collecting one row, he steered the boat to another buoy. Who knew this cage actually had 6 moray eels. When he poured them out, they almost attacked him and bit the back of his hand, but fortunately, he reacted quickly and pulled back.

These 6 moray eels were of different sizes, the big ones were estimated to be over 1.2 meters, and the smaller ones were probably less than a meter. After they were all poured into the basket, they attacked each other again.

Before he could clamp them into the bucket one by one, he suddenly saw a large moray eel actually opening its huge mouth, biting the middle section of another slightly thinner moray eel, tearing at it with its wide, sharp teeth, and refusing to let go.

It looked a bit scary; its mouth actually bit the middle of the other moray eel's body, and it could even swallow it inward.

At this time, other moray eels also spotted them and rushed up to tear at them, cannibalizing their own kind.

Seeing this, Ye Yaodong quickly separated the big ones from the small ones and rescued the half-dead moray eel from the tiger's mouth. Just as he clamped it up, it still had several others hanging on it, refusing to let go.

He carefully clamped them off one by one and threw them into the bucket, putting the big ones in one bucket and the small ones in another.

But he was careless, and one slipped, falling onto the boat. This guy was unusually fierce, raising its head high and, catching him off guard, rushed directly to bite at his feet.

"Damn! Good thing I'm wearing rain boots."

He saw this moray eel open its huge mouth and just bite the rain boot, but it slipped and didn't bite. Ye Yaodong reacted quickly and, when it was about to attack again, stepped on its head and crushed it hard.

"Die!"

Its long tail swam desperately, struggling, from fierce resistance to weak twisting later. After it stopped moving completely, Ye Yaodong waited for a while before safely moving his foot away.

He saw its head had been crushed flat by him, and it even exploded.

He disgustedly picked it up with tongs and threw it into the basket, planning to pick through it with the other fish later.

This net of moray eels took him quite a lot of effort, mainly because they were too fierce, and it was easy to get bitten if he wasn't careful.

He continued to collect the remaining few ground cages. Almost every ground cage had one or two, and some had three or four.

None were as many as the previous cage. He didn't know if they had been eaten, but the few remaining in the cage were quite large, each looking like three or four jin.

When he collected the last ground cage, just as he was pouring it out, he happened to see a small white octopus wriggling, which was suddenly pounced on by a moray eel next to it, biting its head, and then swallowing the whole thing.

"Damn, I couldn't even stop it. It was swallowed in the blink of an eye, and it only picked the good stuff to eat."

Ye Yaodong muttered, clamped it into the bucket, and folded the ground cage. There was only one in the last ground cage.

He was going to collect all these ground cages and put them back in their original positions. By the way, he also had to look around or further out.

He might not have cared about one or two, or two or three moray eels, but the two rows of ground cages just now had caught quite a lot. The first row collected 3, and the second row collected 15.

Those dozen or so added up to over fifty jin, which wasn't cheap, much more expensive than conger eels. He had to look for where the remaining ground cages had been rolled by the waves.

After circling around, he found one at a distance, which made him feel a bit more at ease. Finding one row was one row.

He pulled the ground cage up, but found the fish collection bag was a bit empty? Only a few stone crabs and small pufferfish?

He continued to collect, but it was empty again. When the bag was untied, there wasn't even a jin of cargo inside...

"Son of a bitch, it was stolen!"

He cursed a few times, then collected the whole row of nets. There really wasn't much cargo; the whole row of ground cages didn't even equal the one just now.

Maybe it was because they were left for too long, so they were stolen. He looked around, and there were indeed a few buoys floating.

Feeling depressed, he continued to look. He didn't see any in the surroundings, so he steered toward a further sea area. He didn't expect to really find another one, and there was quite a lot of good cargo.

When he collected the first net, he saw there was quite a lot of cargo inside, so he took a new basket to hold it. Most of it wasn't fresh, but there was a super large mud crab!

"Holy shit, Mud Crab King!"

Ye Yaodong looked excitedly at the huge mud crab crawling around in the basket!

He reached out to grab it, but found that even with his five fingers spread, his palm couldn't control it. He couldn't grab the shell on its back; it needed two hands to grab it.

A normal one or two jin mud crab could be grabbed by an adult's palm.

Sure enough, big waves meant big cargo. He had never seen such a big mud crab before!