Chapter 300: Coral trout?

He helped Ye Fu pull up all the longlines. With the frequent rain lately, there were few fishing boats heading out, and bait at the pier wasn't easy to buy.

Using better-quality fish as bait felt extravagant, so it was better to focus on trawling. With the abundance of catch in spring, the trawling hauls were quite good.

Therefore, they only baited the longlines once recently—dropping them when the boat set out and pulling them up before returning. The rest of the time was spent trawling, remaining flexible.

Once the longlines were up, he continued steering the boat toward the reef. It was already four o'clock; although they had set aside plenty of time, they were still running quite late.

As soon as Ye Fu arrived at the spot, he frowned and said, "There are still six ground cages that haven't been pulled up. I don't know if the ones further back are stuck. If you're going into the water again, find the stuck cages first. I'll pull them up directly from the shore. In case there are more stuck ones, keep an eye out while you're underwater. Let's pull them up early and head back; the sun is about to set."

Ye Yaodong nodded while taking off his clothes, wringing out the wet set he had changed out of earlier. "Got it."

Watching him put the wet clothes back on and strap on the strange mask, snorkel, and fins, Ye Fu couldn't help but nag again: "Remember! Don't get into the water and forget everything. We can always come back; just get the cages up first."

"I know, I'll be up in twenty minutes at most. The watch is in my jacket pocket; you keep track of the time."

He didn't mind the discomfort of wearing wet clothes; he was going into the water immediately anyway.

Having learned his lesson from before, he now brought an extra set of clothes whenever he went out to sea. He had changed into dry ones when he first got ashore, but now that he was going back into the water, he switched back to the wet ones.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have anything to wear when he came up later and would be stuck with wet clothes clinging to his body.

Ye Yaodong tucked the small dip net into the rope tied around his waist to secure it. After a simple warm-up, he jumped into the water.

This time, he didn't need to practice on the surface layer. Familiar with the route, he dove straight into the depths of the sea, not lingering halfway to waste time.

However, while diving, he unexpectedly encountered a school of white-scaled fish at a depth of six or seven meters. The school of fish was silvery-white all over, swimming densely in the same direction.

He felt a pang of regret; if he could trawl them in one go, there would be at least two or three hundred jin. This season happened to be their spawning period, making them sluggish and forming a fishing season.

Watching such a large school of white-scaled fish, he slowed his movements, only to be instantly surrounded by them. The fish, twenty or thirty centimeters long, weren't afraid of him—perhaps relying on their numbers, they swam directly around his body and continued forward.

The underwater world is so wondrous...

He lingered out of curiosity and reached out to poke a white-scaled fish swimming past his eyes. It was startled, flicked its tail, splashed a small spray of water, and hurriedly swam away.

Afraid of lingering too long and wasting time, he didn't wait for the school to pass and kicked his fins to continue diving rapidly.

Seeing the air hose connected to the pump on the boat remain still for a moment and then continue to be pulled taut, Ye Fu's heart skipped a beat, terrified that something had happened.

In his heart, he cursed this troublesome son fiercely: "Can't you just fish properly with nets? Why do you have to mess around with all this nonsense? Being so restless, I'm already old, yet I still have to follow along and worry..."

Ye Yaodong didn't know his father was jumping with anger again. When he dove down again, he didn't dare to delay any longer and dove in one breath straight to the reef on the seabed. This time, his landing spot was three or four meters away from the previous one.

He identified the direction and simply started circling the reef below to rescue the stuck ground cages first.

As it turned out, after circling a large area, he didn't see them nearby. He couldn't help but frown. It was strange; according to the orientation, they should be in this area. It was impossible for them to have vanished.

He continued circling, looking at the shipwreck obstructing his view, wondering if they had drifted onto the ship. That must be why he hadn't seen them after one lap.

Holding onto the mindset of searching a bit more, he tried climbing onto the fishing boat. With just one glance, he saw the ground cage caught by the diesel engine.

Damn it, no wonder he couldn't find it; it had been placed inside here.

At this moment, Ye Fu above was also trying to tug on the rope. One end of the ground cage floated up instantly, but it wouldn't move; a section of the cage was caught on the parts at the edge of the machine.

Ye Yaodong hurriedly stepped forward to untangle that piece of the net, and the cage instantly floated up. His father was truly timely.

Seeing the few scattered small fish in the collection bag at the bottom, he thought to himself that it was a huge loss; there wasn't even a single small lobster or sea cucumber in this haul.

He patted the machine beside him. Since there was no catch, he could take this machine instead. After going back, he would bring a thicker rope next time to tie it up and drag it ashore.

He couldn't drag this shipwreck up, but the machine was a bit more manageable; if he called two more people to help, it would be possible.

It was just that it had been submerged in the sea for a few days; it would be a hassle to pull it up and hire a master to dismantle, clean, and repair it. He didn't know if it would even work.

Better to treat a dead horse as a living one; even a broken ship has three thousand nails. If it couldn't be used, it could still be sold as scrap.

He hadn't wanted to mess around with it originally as it was too much trouble, but now that he had seen it, he might as well pull it up and try. If it worked, it could be worth quite a bit of money.

After thinking it over, he made up his mind and planned to head to the seabed. The top priority was to fill the net bag.

Who knew that just as he was about to pull his hand away and swim off, a grouper swam out from under the machine?

A grouper?

Deep red?

A coral trout? Holy crap!

Ye Yaodong's pupils constricted in shock. It was a pity he was on the seabed; otherwise, he would have had to shout "holy crap" several times to express the surprise in his heart!

Afraid of startling this "coral trout," he didn't dare move his body at all, terrified of scaring it away. He slowly took the dip net from his waist, fearing that excessive movement would cause ripples in the seawater.

He aimed the mouth of the dip net at the fish and was about to scoop it up when he saw the fish alertly flick its tail and dart away to the side.

He followed it with the dip net, thinking that if it swam too far, he would give up. After all, groupers were fierce and active, making them hard to catch, and his time was limited.

He followed it out of the ship and watched it swim toward a reef nearby. It was on his way, so he followed closely behind.

He saw it swim behind the reef and dive into a crevice. That stone crevice only had one entrance and exit. Ye Yaodong was instantly overjoyed; he had thought he wouldn't be able to catch it and was about to give up.

He quickly blocked the exit with the dip net and then slammed his hands against both sides of the stone. The "coral trout," startled, rushed out of the exit and swam directly into the dip net, throwing itself into the trap.

Instantly, he felt an impact, and the inside of the dip net was being violently thrashed about.

He immediately grabbed the mouth of the net tight to prevent it from escaping. This fish was quite fierce and was still struggling after being netted.

His eyes were filled with deep smiles, overjoyed. He opened a small gap in the net mouth, reached his hand in, and planned to grab it and put it into the net bag.

【To be honest, I've been using the source-switching app to read and follow updates lately. It has many voices for reading, and it works great on both Android and Apple.】

Yet, the moment he pulled it out, the smile on his face instantly froze.

What is this?

Holy crap, this isn't a coral trout!

This is a white-lined rockcod!

Damn it, the light underwater wasn't very good, and he hadn't seen it up close in his hand, so he had misidentified it...

Damn it, the two fish look too similar. He was happy for nothing.

Ahhhhh, Ye Yaodong was exhausted with anger...

He had wasted half a day of effort and even chased after its tail. Damn it...

After cursing in his heart, he gloomily threw the fish into the net bag. Since he had already caught it, he couldn't just throw it away.

Sigh, it's infuriating!

"White-lined rockcod" is a common name; its official name is the tail-mark grouper. The front half is bright red, and the back half is darker, sometimes turning into dark brown spots.

Because it looks similar to the coral trout, it is often used by unscrupulous merchants to impersonate coral trout.

In fact, it has two white diagonal "V" shaped stripes on its tail, which are very easy to identify. But just now, in his excitement, it had escaped, and he hadn't seen it carefully. Through the mask, the underwater visibility wasn't that clear, so he had overlooked it.

Sigh, no time to be gloomy. He immediately turned around and swam toward the surrounding reef.

Time was running out. He had spent too much time finding the ground cage and catching the fish. He had to hurry up and just pry some abalone; it was simpler. Otherwise, this trip would be a huge loss.

He kept an eye on his feet to avoid bumping into stonefish or other unknown objects, but he saw a small lobster lying on the reef diagonally above. He estimated it to be seven or eight taels—not small at all.

He aimed the dip net at its tail just in case it ran away, and prepared to grab it with his other hand. But before he could get close, it alertly flicked backward and fell into the net.

The dip net in his hand was pulled taut, and then a continuous tugging sensation came through.

Once it was in the dip net, escaping was impossible.

Ye Yaodong brought the dip net in front of him. The small lobster was struggling inside, but the more it struggled, the tighter its legs were tangled by the net.

He reached out and grabbed it from behind the lobster, untangling its trapped legs from the dip net.

The hand grabbing the lobster simultaneously felt bursts of vibration; this was the lobster's tail constantly bending forward, performing a pushing motion...

After putting it into his pocket, he immediately seized the time to pry abalone. He had been down for a long time, and there was only one fish and one small lobster in the net bag. He could only fill it with abalone first. Fortunately, the abalone wasn't bad either.

He skillfully pried them off when they were off guard, putting them into the net bag one by one...

Feeling he was reaching his limit, he kicked his fins to float up and broke through the surface of the water.

Ye Fu was relieved to see him float up.

"Next time, if it's not necessary, go into the water less. Every time you go down, it takes so long; it's too unsafe."

"It's alright! I didn't go down very deep."

"That's fine, don't go down anymore."

"Actually, it's quite fun. Staying on the boat waiting for a rabbit to hit a tree and opening a blind box is surprising, but it's not as exciting as underwater exploration."

Ye Fu was worried and helpless. "Exciting your head! This is risking your life. The risks at sea are already high, and you're going to the seabed. You really have a long life to waste."

Ye Yaodong responded with "mm-hmm" and "ah-ah" while climbing onto the boat. He felt that a dozen meters was still safe. ===== CHAPTER 301 =====