Chapter 541: What to Do, the Hold Is About to Burst

Wu An said he wanted to open a net.

Lao Fu Tou stepped aside, letting him operate.

"I'll open a net, you rest a while."

"Not sleeping; I'll have a cigarette and rest, then later make dinner." Lao Fu Tou touched a cigarette and lit it: "I'm getting older, my senses are already fewer; if I sleep now, I won't be able to sleep at night."

"Alright then." Wu An didn't press any further, nodded: "We'll raise two more nets and then rest."

Benefiting from the encounter with Tuna, the Daily Luck value of 888 has been used down to just over 150.

Just two nets will deplete it completely.

Lao Fu Tou finished his cigarette and went to cook.

At 4:30 p. m., everyone had already started dinner.

On the ship it's like that; meal times can't be fixed. Even though there's only two or three hours between lunch and dinner, everyone eats a lot; Wu An even polished off two bowls of rice.

The ship's activity level is high; eating little really can't be sustained.

After eating, everyone immediately went to raise the nets.

After some bustle, the net bags were hoisted onto the Deck, plump and bulging, making onlookers feel delighted.

It was Fan Xiao Zhu's turn to untie the net.

He spat on his hand, rubbed it hard, then went up to pull apart the net bag's rope.

The next moment.

Croakers piled up on the Deck.

A Qing scratched his head: "Did the net catch a Sea Bass school?"

Fu Yongning laughed: "Not Sea Bass, it's croaker!"

"And they're all different kinds of croaker."

"How rare! Though we say there are croakers around here, they're usually few. This time the whole net is croaker—truly a rarity."

Lao Fu Tou explained: "Not surprising."

"Did you forget what our previous net caught?"

Fu Yongning said: "It was Shrimp Crab."

"Right, the previous net also had croaker; these croakers feed on Shrimp Crab, so we happened to stumble upon a croaker school."

Mei Wu caught on and laughed: "So this net is a fortune?"

Fu Yongning nodded.

Definitely.

Although croaker isn't very pricey, a net yielding two or three tons of croaker is, by any calculation, a windfall.

Fan Xiao Zhu smiled: "That's good, that's good."

To be honest.

He was somewhat reluctant about raising the net rope; previously everyone had gotten decent catches, and if he were to pull up a fat fish, even if Wu An said nothing, he would feel uneasy.

After all, he's just a deckhand.

Now that the catch is valuable, he feels relieved, happily squatting down to sort the croaker.

Fu Yongning divided them into three grades.

Large, medium, small.

Even the smallest croaker, according to Fu Yongning, isn't that tiny—about a little over a jin, around two jin; Fu Yongning grouped those under five jin into one grade.

For croakers this large, the swim bladders are too small to be worth extracting for fish gelatin, so their selling price is relatively low.

Those weighing five to ten jin are classified as medium.

This is also the most common.

Those over ten jin need to be stored separately; larger croaker fetch higher prices, and the swim bladders in fish this size are already quite valuable.

A Qing found an especially large one, weighed it, and shouted happily: "This one's twenty‑five jin, probably the biggest, right?"

Fu Yongning nodded: "A Qing, your knack for finding good stuff is impressive."

"A croaker this size can sell for eight or nine hundred, and you can extract about two or three liang of swim bladder, which can fetch five or six hundred yuan."

A Qing was stunned: "So the flesh of this twenty‑plus‑jin fish only sells for two or three hundred?"

By that calculation, the flesh is only a few dozen yuan per jin.

Fu Yongning smiled and nodded.

The reason croaker can fetch a high price is that its swim bladder can be made into fish maw, and everyone knows the value of fish maw—especially women, who prize it for its collagen, believing that eating it beautifies the skin.

Besides its benefits, fish maw also has an exceptional texture.

Where they are, many dishes use fish maw; with fish maw, the price of a dish rises dramatically— even a simple soup can transform into a delicacy.

Lao Fu Tou saw A Qing looking disdainfully at the croaker and said: "These are black croaker, resembling Sea Bass."

"The meat of croaker compared to its swim bladder is indeed a bit inferior, but it's not worthless."

"In fact, it's quite fresh and tasty."

"In short, this fish is a treasure all over."

After hearing him finish, everyone finally gained a deeper understanding of croaker.

Everyone chatted and laughed while working.

Don't be fooled by Lao Fu Tou's light words; in fact, you can't find this info online— it's passed down orally by old fishermen.

So‑called tradition lies in the ordinary.

Within less than an hour, all the croaker were cleared. Wu An watched everyone tidy the Deck again, feeling a bit wistful; among the Golden Seven brothers, croaker, queen fish, Small Yellow Fish, and Mei Tong fish had already been harvested.

But the previously sought Yellow‑lip fish, Hairy catfish, and Large yellow fish are still nowhere to be found.

Forget about the yellow-lip fish.

After all, that thing is protected, of course. If you happen to pick up a dead yellow-lip fish at sea, would it be all right to bring it back to the dock to sell?

That would definitely be fine.

Anyway, you have the goods, and someone will pay.

One hand pays, the other delivers the goods; once the transaction is done, no one will meddle.

Wu An doesn't have to worry about finding buyers, but he has no goods, so no matter how he thinks about it, it's pointless.

He went back to the resting room.

After drinking half a cup of tea, Fu Yongning came over with a solemn expression and said, "A An, the ice storage is almost full."

Wu An blinked: "Full?"

He quickly calculated.

Good partner.

Not knowing is fine, but once you calculate, you'll be shocked.

It's not like it's about to fill up, is it?

This ice storage has a capacity of about twenty tons; with devil fish, Huang San, Mei Tong, small yellow fish, flying fish, ghost-head knives plus tuna, and various odds and ends, it's at least fifteen or sixteen tons.

Putting the catch inside, it's impossible to pack it as tightly as seawater with no gaps; there's always some wasted space, yet if it can still hold more, that's all thanks to Fu Yongning's proper arrangement of the work.

Fu Yongning said, "At most, we could probably fit another two or three tons of catch."

A Qing shouted, "That won't do; it's just a matter of one net."

Fu Yongning nodded: "About right."

A Qing turned pale: "Brother, what do we do? We've only been out two days; we can't just go back like this, can we?"

Wu An laughed: "Served cold."

This is a good thing.

We're not returning empty-handed; we're returning with an overflowing hold.

The Fan brothers gave a foolish hehe laugh.

An overflowing hold!

This isn't their small fishing boat; it's a trawler over twenty meters long, with a fully loaded capacity of several tens of tons—what does that mean?

Even if the catch were worthless, it would still be worth several hundred thousand.

Their boat is full of meat crabs, orchid crabs, ao shrimp, nine-section shrimp, Huang San, small yellow fish—these are catches of decent value, not to mention several thousand jin of tuna!

In just two days, they'd surely make over a million.

When they first joined, Wu An said that if they worked hard for a few years they could buy a car and build a house; at this pace, they wouldn't even need a year to achieve all that.

At this moment, they were immensely grateful to have agreed to follow Wu An; if they had listened to the old man at home, they'd probably never catch a break in this life.