I Can Fish Up Everything!

Chapter 78: Chapter 78: Beachcombing for Choice Finds

Seven thousand five hundred. Gu Nan knocked off a hundred yuan, though he wouldn’t have minded going a little lower.

If Brother Wang hadn’t taken him out to sea, he never would have caught this monster.

But Wang Junhe was wealthy and not short on cash, so he’d readily paid a round number.

The boat had a small signal booster that provided Wi-Fi, so he transferred the money right then and there.

’Gu Nan’s bank account balance was now over forty-three thousand. Business had been pretty good these past few days!’

Large fish were still rare. Gu Nan had already made a killing by catching that big grouper, and the others had also landed a few decent catches weighing ten or so pounds.

So, after fishing for a while longer without any more big fish biting, they all switched back to smaller hooks and went back to fishing for silver pomfret.

The school of silver pomfret hadn’t left, so the bite was fantastic. The three men on the boat entered harvest mode once again.

”Oh, right, Brother Wang, where did you get your boat license? I’m thinking about getting one myself. In a little while, I want to get a small fishing boat to make it easier to go out fishing.”

”Instead of running your seafood shop properly, you’re out here fishing every day?” Wang Junhe asked, looking completely astonished.

Seeing his expression, Guo Xiao couldn’t help but call him out. ”Where do you get the nerve to ask Ah Nan that? Don’t you have any damn self-awareness?”

”At least Ah Nan can actually catch fish. With someone watching the shop, isn’t it perfectly normal for him to come out to sea to ’restock’?”

”Not like you. You suck at fishing but you’re still addicted. You get skunked every single day and still have the nerve to run all over the place.”

”...” Wang Junhe was left speechless by the roast. ”Is it really that bad?”

”Want me to ask your wife?”

”Uh... no need for that. I humbly accept your criticism.”

Wang Junhe waved his hand, admitting Guo Xiao had a point. But whether he’d actually change was another matter entirely.

He returned to Gu Nan’s question. ”I’ll recommend a place to you later. Just go there and sign up. The instruction is pretty thorough and the fee is relatively cheap—only five thousand.”

”Once you pass the test, you can basically get your license in about half a month.”

”Of course, there are back channels you can use to get it sooner.” (For plot purposes, he will get the license early.)

Hearing that last sentence, it instantly clicked for Gu Nan.

’Those back channels aren’t for just anyone,’ Gu Nan thought. ’It seems Wang Junhe has connections.’ He smiled and said, ”Getting it sooner would be great, of course. Next time I catch a monster, you’ll be the first one I call.”

Wang Junhe clapped him on the shoulder, a satisfied smile spreading across his face.

’In the future, he too would have a place in the world of fishing.’

’Oh, right! I’ve already bought the fish, but I haven’t posted the picture in the group chat yet!’

At that thought, Wang Junhe stopped fishing for pomfret. He reeled in his line, immediately pulled out his phone, and sent the picture he’d taken with the grouper to his group chat.

”What do you do when the only pose you know is an old-fashioned peace sign?”

This wasn’t the fishing group Gu Nan was in, but one for Wang Junhe’s own social circle, full of fishing buddies from well-to-do families.

Guo Xiao took out his phone to look. ’Damn, this guy knows how to flex.’

’Today wasn’t his day to shine; Wang had stolen all the thunder.’

’He decided then and there: next time, he would take his own boat out, and he would definitely bring Gu Nan along.’

The man of the hour, however, had no idea he was about to be invited on his second trip out to sea. He was too busy happily fishing away.

Time slowly crept toward ten-thirty in the morning. Their fishing for the day was temporarily over; now it was time to forage along the shore and prepare a big lunch.

Suddenly, Wang Junhe produced a rubber dinghy and an air pump from who-knows-where.

Gu Nan had a moment of realization. ’Ah, so that’s how he plans to get to shore!’ He’d been wondering about that.

’Parking the boat by the reef was a no-go. Even if the water was deep enough, the waves would push the boat against the rocks. Any bumps and scrapes would be costly.’

’The rubber dinghy made it all make sense. After they got onto the reef, Wang Junhe could take the dinghy and land on the beach.’

The boat first pulled up alongside the reef to let Gu Nan and Guo Xiao disembark, bringing a foam cooler and their foraging tools with them.

Inside the cooler were ingredients Wang Junhe had prepared—beef, vegetables, and fruit—along with a few of the silver pomfret they’d caught that morning. They hadn’t brought it up earlier to keep it out of the direct sun.

’It would be unrealistic not to bring your own ingredients. This wasn’t some foreign country where you could just catch lobsters and giant crabs wherever you pleased.’

After setting down the ingredients on the beach, Gu Nan glanced over at Wang Junhe’s wife, who was drawing in the sand with her daughter. ’So much for collecting seashells,’ he thought wryly. ’Where are the shells?’

’No wonder Brother Wang had asked them to do the foraging; he had clearly anticipated this.’

”Brother Xiao, where are we foraging? Over on that reef?”

”Let’s head over there. We can pry off some oysters and barnacles.”

Gu Nan nodded and followed him, climbing toward the far end of the reef.

Oysters and barnacles were both very common. Most were farmed these days, so nobody would go out of their way to come here and harvest them.

Anglers, especially, wouldn’t bother. Why waste time prying these things off rocks when you could be catching a few fish?

It was more about getting a fresh taste of the sea, so they’d pry off a few just to try.

Sure enough, when they followed Guo Xiao to the middle section of the reef’s far end, Gu Nan saw a large number of volcano barnacles and oysters, all of them quite large.

The two of them climbed down, placed a bucket between them, and got to work with their foraging tools.

This kind of foraging tool had a hook on one end for pulling things out of rock crevices, and a scraper on the other, perfect for prying off oysters and the triangular volcano barnacles. Things like sea snails were even easier to deal with.

Gu Nan searched around and found plenty of volcano barnacles, but he could hardly see any true oysters. Instead, there were lots of smaller rock oysters.

The rock oysters were smaller, and their texture and nutritional value couldn’t compare to true oysters. He decided to start by prying off some volcano barnacles first.

”There are no real oysters here, just these smaller rock oysters.”

”Don’t be picky about the rock oysters. Grab some, and we’ll make an omelet with them later.” Guo Xiao, beside him, was happy to take whatever they could get.

Hearing that, Gu Nan picked out a few of the larger rock oysters, pried them off, and tossed them into the bucket.

After prying for a while, he started to get bored. Crouching was also getting tiring, so he said, ”Brother Xiao, you keep at it. I’m going to check up ahead and see if I can find anything else.”

”Sure, go ahead!” Guo Xiao had been about to say that there couldn’t possibly be anything else to find, that the morning crowd of anglers would have already picked the area clean.

But then he thought about Gu Nan’s luck and held his tongue.

’Luck was a mysterious thing. Maybe wandering around a bit really would turn something up.’

And just like that, Gu Nan picked up his bucket, climbed over two large boulders ahead, and came to a low-lying area where he spotted several sea urchins wedged in a rock crevice.

He approached cautiously. With the cautionary tale of Yi Chen, and his own near-slip while fishing before, he was now extremely careful when moving around the reefs.

Once he was close, Gu Nan used his foraging tool to hook the sea urchins out of the crevice.

They were horse-dung sea urchins, six of them in total. ’Not bad,’ he thought. ’Guess it really pays to walk around.’

After placing the sea urchins in his bucket, Gu Nan peered into a crevice at the base of the boulder in front of him. And what did he see but two thick, powerful claws—a big crab was hiding inside!

The crevice wasn’t deep at all, and because the crab was so large, it could only hide near the entrance. He used his foraging tool to drag it right out. The enraged crab immediately raised its claws high, ready for a fight.

The crab looked a bit like a mud crab, but its shell was purple and dark red. It was a red-armored crab.

It was a relatively common type of crab, much cheaper than the mud crab. When the fishing season opened, you could find it for as cheap as twenty yuan a pound in some places, though the normal retail price was usually around sixty to seventy.

It’s normal for seafood prices to fluctuate wildly. The twenty-yuan price was what fishermen charged right at the docks when the season opened; you’d never find it that cheap at a market.

As for the online prices—the cheap ones at sixty-eight a pound, the expensive ones over a hundred—you were better off just looking.

Buying them online was for suckers. If you really had money to burn, you were better off looking at a physical market, or just buying something else entirely.