Chapter 543: Beyond Expectations

Wu An added all the remaining several tens of Luck Value, stared at the system for a while; the Trawling had just been lowered not long ago, and the Luck Value began to drop.

This is Trawling.

The operating range of Trawling itself is relatively large, and furthermore Luck Value has the ability to gather and control fish.

As long as it's covered by Trawling, the catch basically has no chance to escape.

In this situation Wu An specially chose a relatively large mesh size, trying to reduce the impact on the environment as much as possible.

There's not much to say about that.

Fishing at sea is to make money; he believes he has already, under limited conditions, made the most suitable choice as much as possible.

The midday sun was scorching; besides the wife who had to steer the boat, everyone else was eating fruit in the lounge.

The fruit on the ship was plentiful and varied; mango, watermelon, dragon fruit—basically any fruit they had here was also on the ship.

The fruit was not prepared by Wu An.

Rather, it was bought by the sister-in-law and Gu Anran; each person bought enough for everyone on the ship for several days, so together they ended up with the situation of not being able to finish eating it.

The watermelon was simply cut in half, each person taking a spoon to scoop and eat.

Even the prepared tea had no one to drink it.

Wu An said: "Later, each person one dragon fruit."

Upon hearing, everyone's faces turned a bit bitter; these past few days, after every meal when ordering fruit, dragon fruit was always included.

Dragon fruit itself isn't very sweet, but its sugar content is actually excessive; anyway Wu An doesn't like eating this.

But its advantage is that it promotes bowel movement.

Conditions on the ship are harsh, especially it's hard to supplement nutrients like vitamins.

Actually.

Mei Yueqin and Gu Anran were somewhat taking things for granted.

On this trawler, their days shouldn't be too bad; they eat well and sleep well each day.

Since they bought it, they can't waste it; therefore Wu An stipulated that after everyone finishes their meal each day, they must gnaw a dragon fruit.

Originally on the fishing boat, being able to eat fruit every day was originally a good thing, but they made it into a de facto punishment.

As soon as everyone ate dragon fruit, each one's face turned bitter like bitter melon.

They're all tough guys; the treatment is too good, they can barely stand it.

Wu An couldn't care less about these.

The post-meal fruit benefit must be given whether they like it or not.

After returning like this, the elder sister-in-law and Gu Anran will know they ate all the prepared fruit; they'll surely be happy inside.

So.

We can only make the brothers suffer a bit.

After everyone ate their fill of fruit, Wu An glanced at the system, saw the Luck Value was cleared, then got up and went to the Control Room to look for Old Fu Tou.

Old Fu Tou heard Wu An say they wanted to raise the net, nodded, didn't even ask a question, and notified everyone.

Arrived at the deck.

Everyone was muttering how they could raise the net so fast; Old Fu Tou didn't explain either.

Not long after, the net bag was hauled up.

Everyone saw the net bag was limp, felt somewhat disappointed; Fu Yongning even shouted, telling Old Uncle not to give random orders, raising a net after just one hour.

Old Fu Tou refused to take the blame: "It was A An who said to raise it."

"Raising it earlier is also good."

"With the boat speed up, we can also reach the dock earlier."

Wu An was somewhat surprised.

That shouldn't be.

Several tens of Luck Value were poured down; logically, the catch shouldn't be too small.

Fu Yongning naturally wouldn't say irrelevant things; he hurried forward to untie the net.

The rope was pulled open.

The crane arm lifted up.

The not-so-large catch fell onto the deck.

It was mainly shrimp and crab.

Bottom-layer trawling; this is the main catch.

Besides shrimp and crab, there were also not a few bottom-layer fish.

"Not bad, not bad, plenty of good goods." Fu Yongning saw a fat, large grouper and laughed, shouting out.

A Qing said: "I knew it."

"Listening to the brother is definitely correct."

"Look at this big grouper; one fish equals several tens of catties of shrimp and crab, right?"

Everyone laughed and nodded.

Mei Wu followed, saying: "This is not about quantity, but quality."

"These flopping ones are still quite vigorous; thanks to raising early, if we'd dragged another half hour or more, these groupers would probably already be half-dead when hauled up."

Fu Yongning picked up and sorted, happily shouting: "Don't just stand there, hurry up and work."

"Look at the condition of these groupers; they'll surely survive."

Groupers are usually caught by fishing line; trawling rarely catches them.

Being able to catch so many groupers, and with such good appearance, made him involuntarily overjoyed.

There are many types of grouper; right now there are several kinds, gray grouper is the most numerous, blue grouper and tiger grouper are also not few, basically they are all relatively common.

Not to mention especially valuable groupers, there isn't even a single red grouper, which leaves Wu An somewhat disappointed.

Actually, groupers are usually not schooling, and they live in deep-water areas.

Being able to catch this many groupers with trawling is already the result of cheating.

Besides groupers, there are also plenty of bream, and fishing originally targets bottom-dwelling fish.

Moreover, they feed on shrimp and crab.

Black bream predominates, and true bream is also plentiful.

A Qing found a large stone bream and shouted excitedly, "Brother, quick look, there's a stone bream almost a meter long."

Wu An turned his head to look, and A Qing was straining to drag along a stone bream.

He smiled and said it was not bad; this stone bream probably weighs thirty or forty catties, which is more valuable than ordinary grouper.

The catch is not much.

Soon they had finished sorting through the catch.

Unfortunately, there was only that one stone bream.

Fu Yongning rushed over to rescue it, and the two of them carefully placed the stone bream into the live fish hold.

The stone bream sank to the bottom and was not very active.

Fu Yongning shook his head: "It probably won't last much longer."

Wu An didn't say anything.

It's just trawling.

The appearance wasn't damaged, which already counts as good luck.

Fu Yongning asked, "A An, let's drop another net."

Wu An shook his head.

Fu Yongning, unwilling to give up, urged: "In just an hour we've got this kind of haul, which is quite good; before we head back we could probably drop two more nets."

Wu An said, "With just this boatload of catch, unloading at the dock will still take half a day."

Moreover, you see, the catch piled on the deck can't wait.

Or we should just rush full speed to the dock.

"All right then." Fu Yongning, seeing he couldn't be persuaded, went off grumbling to keep busy.

Part of the shrimp and crab are sprayed with seawater to keep them alive as much as possible, and some cheap miscellaneous fish are taken from the cold storage, with ice scattered over them.

Everyone is quite busy.

Wu An is very satisfied with the haul from this first trip out to sea; it can be said to have exceeded expectations.

If the catch weren't too large, it would already be piled on the deck, and he would even be thinking about returning to the dock in the middle of the night.

That's settled.

No point thinking about all that extraneous stuff.

Let it cause a stir if it's going to.

Before, when his wings were not yet full, he kept a low profile to make money quietly; now it's different—he has a crew of trustworthy shipworkers, brothers, friends, and even some connections.

He doesn't claim to be extremely tough, but at least he can now hold his own in a wrist‑to‑wrist match with folks around these ten‑li‑eight‑villages area.

It's no problem to raise his tail a little.

His reputation being out there sometimes brings trouble, but wealth and good fortune might also naturally come knocking.

As for trouble?

If someone really is jealous and tries to cause him trouble, it's purely them asking for discomfort.