I Can Fish Up Everything!

Chapter 265: Chapter 166: Using the Trial Card

For the next hour or so, Gu Nan continuously caught eighteen red sea breams, each weighing two or three pounds. A small school had clearly passed through.

Unfortunately, they only stayed for an hour before leaving, and he went back to coming up empty with every cast.

Seeing that casting wasn’t yielding much, Gu Nan opened the Shop. He checked his remaining Gold Coins; after his 50,000-coin expenditure, he had 23,000 left. He set aside 20,000 for gold keys, which left enough for hooks and bait.

The starting price for golden hooks and bait was one thousand Gold Coins.

This gear could quickly drain the stamina of large fish weighing over a hundred pounds, so Gu Nan knew he’d have to buy it eventually. For now, however, his target wasn’t big fish, and he was still in an experimental phase. He spent two hundred Gold Coins on a ten-centimeter soft lure and a special hook designed for catching Emperor Crabs.

He took out the soft lure and gave it a sniff. It had a strong fishy smell, and its effectiveness was no worse than frozen bait, though it still couldn’t compare to the real thing.

He took out a bait cage, stuffed it full of Antarctic krill, and then tied it to his line along with a heavy five-kilogram lead sinker.

After swapping the Big Fatty lure for the soft bait, Gu Nan picked up his rod, lowered the hook into the water, and opened the bail to let out the line.

The line spooled out rapidly. Dragged down by the lead sinker, the soft lure reached the seabed in just a few moments.

When Gu Nan saw the line go slack, he closed the bail, reeled in about three meters of line, and began waiting for a fish to bite.

At a depth of nearly six hundred meters, very few fish were active. But the Bering Sea was known for its deep-sea species, so there should be something down there.

After waiting for quite a while with no movement from the rod, Gu Nan decided to set it in a holder on the gunwale. The game provided mounts for these boat rods.

He then took the newly acquired Seven-Star Electric Reel Rod from his inventory, mounted it in the holder next to the other one, and let it fish automatically.

With three thousand meters of line, it could even reel in an Elite BOSS, as long as it was smaller than a giant-class monster.

Gu Nan also activated Simplified Mode and Angling Mode. Most seafood varieties from Seven-Star Rock sold quite well. After applying a filter, he found there were still twenty-six species with high sales volumes, mostly purchased by hotels.

’I’m not thinking about supplying a second hotel right now,’ he thought. ’There’s no need.’

Junhao Hotel’s demand alone far outstripped his supply. He couldn’t even fish fast enough to keep up with them, so supplying a second hotel would be pointless—unless someone started intentionally lowballing his prices.

But with the clout of Wang Junhe and Guo Xiao, that wasn’t likely to happen.

He mounted the electric reel rod in its holder as well. Since he planned to catch deep-sea fish, he again used a soft lure paired with a lead sinker. After setting the bait, he began semi-automatic fishing.

He didn’t take out the Fengqi Fishing Rod, afraid he wouldn’t be able to manage all three at once.

The bait on the electric reel rod had been on the seafloor for less than a minute before a fish took the hook. He quickly pressed the retrieve button, a stark contrast to the motionless rod beside it.

’Looks like this ”sync rate” is really important,’ he mused. ’The fish are biting so quickly on this one.’

Just as he was thinking that, the other rod finally showed some action. The Bering Sea boat rod twitched up and down a few times, then bent sharply, creaking under the strain. ’Looks like this fish isn’t small.’

Gu Nan hurried over, grabbed the rod, and yanked it upward, successfully setting the hook.

He held the rod with one hand and rapidly cranked the reel with the other. The fish was putting up a strong fight. He couldn’t estimate the exact weight of a deep-sea fish, but the pull felt similar to a sixteen or seventeen-pound surface dweller.

The common-grade white rod really wasn’t up to snuff, and since Gu Nan hadn’t used particularly good line or bait, the fish’s stamina wasn’t draining very quickly.

He was already reeling with all his might, yet he still managed to get his fish to the side of the boat at the same time as the electric reel rod.

But the size difference between the two fish was huge. Gu Nan’s was only about two feet long, while the Seven-Star rod had hooked a Dogtooth Fish that was about four feet long.

Huh?

Gu Nan compared the two fish and realized they looked surprisingly similar.

He grabbed a gaff and hauled his fish aboard. The moment it was out of the water, he estimated its weight to be around twelve or thirteen pounds.

He threw the fish onto the deck, then quickly moved over to the other side. He gaffed the four-foot-plus Dogtooth Fish to kill it, and once it stopped struggling, he used the boat’s hoist to lift it aboard.

A four-foot Dogtooth Fish weighed seventy or eighty pounds; no matter how strong he was, he couldn’t lift that with just a gaff by himself.

It was mainly an issue of leverage; otherwise, lifting seventy or eighty pounds would have been easy for him.

He removed the hook from the Dogtooth Fish and tossed the line back into the water to continue fishing. After storing the fish in the Cold Storage for processing, he went back to the other side to examine the deep-sea fish he’d caught from the Bering Sea.

It did look a lot like a Dogtooth Fish, with very little difference. He used the appraisal function on it.

[Sablefish, also known as Black Cod. A wild Sablefish from the Bering Sea. Flavor Rating: Six and a half stars. Primary cooking methods: Steamed, pan-seared, and deep-fried. Suggested retail price: 150 yuan per pound. Based on market research, chilled shipping is not recommended. Sablefish is a high-grade culinary fish. Game buyback price: 50 Gold Coins per pound.]

’Huh, the Gold Coin buyback price is pretty good. This one Sablefish can sell for over 550 Gold Coins. Accumulating more Gold Coins after finishing the next few quests shouldn’t be too hard.’

Gu Nan had certainly heard of the famous Sablefish; he’d even eaten it before. He just never knew what the actual fish looked like.

He moved the fish to the Cold Storage, where two processing options appeared: ”Slice, package, and preserve,” or ”Gut, behead, and preserve whole.”

Gu Nan thought for a moment and decided to leave it for now. Slicing and packaging resulted in slightly more waste, but it also increased the price by twenty or thirty yuan per pound.

But the hotel didn’t need fillets; they wanted whole fish. He decided to wait until he had a larger catch before deciding how many to sell whole and how many to fillet.

Another twenty-odd minutes passed. The Seven-Star rod had already landed its fourth Dogtooth Fish, while the other rod had just caught its second Sablefish, this one weighing around ten pounds.

In such a short time, its efficiency was already double the other rod’s. The longer he fished, the greater the difference would become.

Gu Nan lost interest in catching more Sablefish for the time being. He switched hooks, pulled a small Star Chicken Fish from his inventory to use as bait, and cast the special rig into the water.

Huh. The next moment, a thought struck him.

’The game has a buyback feature now... so can I sell off the few remaining Golden Needlefish and all those clownfish in my aquarium?’

Gu Nan quickly cleared out his aquarium and Cold Storage, selling off all the seafood he was unlikely to use in the future.

While the quantity of any single species wasn’t high, the total from over twenty different types added up. Gu Nan made a quick 25,700 Gold Coins. With that, he could afford four gold keys.

’But I won’t buy them just yet. I’ll use the trial card tonight and see what happens.’

Another long while passed. The Seven-Star rod had already caught two more fish before his other line finally showed some activity.

The pull wasn’t strong this time; if Gu Nan hadn’t been watching the rod tip closely, he might have missed it entirely.

He suspected he had a bite, so he began cranking the handle to reel in the line.

The moment he started reeling, he knew an Emperor Crab was on the line; the weight was significantly heavier.

He quickly reeled in the line, and a brownish-tan Emperor Crab covered in sharp spikes broke the surface.

It couldn’t move at all. It was tangled in the steel wire mesh on the hook and, despite its struggles, only became more ensnared the more it moved.

[Short-legged Rock Crab, also known as Peppery Emperor Crab or Flower-blooming Crab. A species of stone crab from the Bering Sea. Flavor Rating: Five stars. Suitable for all crab preparations. Suggested retail price: 200 yuan per pound. Game buyback price for Peppery Emperor Crab: 63 Gold Coins per pound.]

This Flower-blooming Crab wasn’t large, only about three or four pounds. This particular species of emperor crab doesn’t grow very big.

The average size is around three to four pounds, with the largest specimens reaching only six or seven pounds. The more famous red or blue king crabs can grow to over ten pounds, so there’s really no comparison. Consequently, this species is the cheapest among the emperor crabs.

Some people find this type of emperor crab delicious, while others don’t. Gu Nan decided to take out a pot and cook it up for a midnight snack to see for himself.

After cleaning it, he put it on to steam, leaving his rods to continue fishing.

He even took a moment to whip up a dipping sauce so the flavor wouldn’t be too plain.

It was already late, just past one in the morning. Gu Nan planned to eat the crab, head back to shore, and then check out the trial tower.

After about twenty minutes, he figured the Emperor Crab was cooked. He turned off the flame, took the crab out, and placed it on a large plate to cool. Then, he reeled in both his fishing rods.

In those twenty minutes, the Seven-Star rod had done alright, landing two hakes and an orange roughy.

The Bering Sea rod, on the other hand, hadn’t moved at all in that time. ’Perhaps I missed a bite from an Emperor Crab,’ Gu Nan thought.

But as he finished reeling in the line, he was a little disappointed to find there was no crab on the hook.

’Normally, the density of Emperor Crabs is high, so the hook-up rate should be good. Too bad the sync rate on this rod is so low.’

He washed his hands, went back into the cabin, and sat on the sofa to enjoy his midnight snack.

Gout be damned, he was going to eat first and worry about it later.

He cracked open a claw. Not bad; it was packed with meat.

One great thing about the seafood from the game was that he’d never seen a scrawny one, be it fish or crab.

He took a bite of the plain meat first. As he tasted it, his eyebrows shot up.

It was incredibly fresh and sweet. The flavor wasn’t like a typical emperor crab; it was more like spider crab.

But after he finished the claw and opened up the body, he noticed a difference.

A spider crab’s body is also packed with meat. This Flower-blooming Crab, however, was like other emperor crabs: the main body cavity was mostly empty, containing just some roe and not much meat. That wasn’t really a flaw; it’s just how this type of crab is built.

Fortunately, the legs were full of meat, which was still delicious.

In fact, the crab did have one major flaw: it was incredibly spiky!

Satisfied after finishing the crab, he cleaned up, tossed the shell fragments into the water, and set a course for home.

He arrived home at three in the morning, but he didn’t feel sleepy at all.

After a quick shower, he lay down on his bed, opened his game inventory, and used the trial card. The next moment, the world spun. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself on a circular platform. About fifty meters to his left stood a heavyset foreigner with a large beard.