I Can Fish Up Everything!

Chapter 273: Chapter 174: Seriously? This Also Counts as a Special Fishing Ground?

’What in the world? Who builds a fish farm out in the open ocean?’

Gu Nan scanned the horizon but saw no sign of the fish farm he’d imagined. ’What’s going on?’

But in the next moment, the game explained the rules and gameplay for this session.

It turned out that the special fishing ground card didn’t just send him to random fish farms. It could also transport him to natural fishing grounds to catch seafood he could never hope to land with just a rod.

This time, he was at a location somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea. As the temporary captain, he could order the crew on board to help him with one trawl.

He got to choose the location, but regardless of what that one haul brought in—profit or loss—he would only get this single chance.

A single trawl would take at least three hours, and a few of those would eat up the entire day. The game would never give him that much time.

Gu Nan was stunned. It was so arbitrary this time. ’Whether I net anything good is all down to luck?’

Although his luck had improved significantly in his normal fishing, he had no confidence when it came to the game!

Seeing the timer start to count down, Gu Nan sighed in resignation. He glanced at the fish finder, which showed what seemed to be a school of fish at his two o’clock, at a depth of over six hundred meters. With no other choice, he ordered the first mate to head in that direction.

The seven or eight crewmen on deck got busy, lowering the trawl net.

This was a trawler specialized in catching deep-sea fish, basically plowing the seabed.

Fortunately, there wasn’t much coral in waters this deep, so it wouldn’t cause too much damage to the seafloor.

Gu Nan, watching a trawler at work for the first time, was initially fascinated. But after the net was deployed, he slowly grew bored.

The trawler moved slowly across the surface, changing direction as needed based on the signals from the fish finder.

Gu Nan didn’t have to do anything except occasionally give directions. This was easily the most relaxed job he’d ever had in the game.

Three hours passed. The trawler stopped, and the crewmen began the busy work of hauling in the net.

Gu Nan couldn’t sit still any longer. He dashed out onto the deck, eager to see the haul.

As the net was hauled up bit by bit, a small, bulging pouch soon broke the surface and was hoisted into the air.

Seeing the small pouch, only about a cubic meter in size, Gu Nan’s heart sank. ’Three hours of trawling for just this little bit?’

Everyone knows that trawl nets usually catch a lot of miscellaneous fish, with a very low proportion of valuable ones. A small pouch like this wouldn’t contain much of value.

But there was nothing Gu Nan could do. As the pouch was brought to the center of the deck, a crewman untied the rope at the bottom, and the contents of the net spilled out, forming a small mound on the deck.

Even though the pouch hadn’t looked big, the pile on the deck seemed quite substantial.

When he saw the deck covered in bright red shrimp, Gu Nan’s eyes lit up. What a turn of events!

Shrimp were more valuable than most fish. Even the cheapest imported ones could be worth dozens or even hundreds.

This was the Mediterranean, not Antarctica; you couldn’t catch cheap Antarctic krill here.

Gu Nan hurried forward and picked up a small, freshly dead red shrimp to examine it. The more he looked, the more familiar it seemed.

He rummaged through the pile and found a palm-sized prawn. He recognized this one—wasn’t this the famous Red Demon Shrimp?

’Could these smaller ones also be Red Demon Shrimp?’

Their shapes were quite similar, but they were less vibrantly red and more translucent, which was why Gu Nan, who had never handled Red Demon Shrimp before, didn’t recognize them at first.

Although there were still many miscellaneous fish mixed in, this haul was definitely not going to be bad.

A quick look through the pile revealed a considerable number of palm-sized Red Demon Shrimp. It seemed this was a very good haul after all.

With a wave of his hand, Gu Nan sent the entire pile into his Chilled Storage.

He sold all the worthless miscellaneous fish to the game’s recycling system, earning over seven hundred Gold Coins.

Then, he had the Chilled Storage sort the Red Demon Shrimp by size. For this particular item, the price increased a little with each step up in size.

Soon, his Red Demon Shrimp were sorted into five grades. The most numerous were those under fifteen centimeters, which, according to the appraisal function, could be sold for 200 yuan per jin.

After that, for every three to four centimeters in size, the price increased by twenty yuan.

The largest, around thirty centimeters, could sell for 320 yuan per jin.

But these were also the rarest. Gu Nan’s haul included only seventy-three shrimp of this size, each weighing nearly half a jin.

There was a relatively large quantity of shrimp around twenty-five centimeters—a small pile of roughly four or five hundred. He didn’t count them precisely; he would just arrange for a portion to be shipped out later.

He exited the game, feeling pleased. The flavor of Red Demon Shrimp was much richer than other shrimp, and he was definitely going to try some tomorrow.

「He woke up at 5:30 AM the next morning.」

He’d been sleeping well and waking up early these past two days. Gu Nan went to pick up Yi Chen as usual, teasing her a little after parking the car at the seafood market entrance.

His girlfriend hadn’t let him into her bedroom lately, so he had to find ways to scratch the itch in the car.

The morning passed in a flurry of activity. Unfortunately, the Red Demon Shrimp wouldn’t arrive until noon. Gu Nan had originally planned to take some ingredients to the club for a seafood barbecue and to practice his diving, but Yi Chen had made plans with Zhao Jiajia to go clothes shopping.

Their parents were scheduled to meet tomorrow, and Yi Chen had emptied her entire closet the previous night without finding a single outfit she was happy with.

She usually dressed casually, and most of her clothes were sportswear.

Since she was meeting Gu Nan’s parents tomorrow, she wanted to buy a long dress that was both pretty and not too casual, so she asked Zhao Jiajia to go with her.

With his girlfriend off shopping, Gu Nan immediately gave up on his plan to go to the club.

He had a couple of polo shirts that were casual yet mature and steady, perfect for meeting the parents.

Realizing he hadn’t been out for a proper day of fishing in two days, Gu Nan decided to take the boat out to sea.

He would use up his accumulated daily attempts, finish the remaining quests, and besides, he still hadn’t used his blue-grade Bering Sea fishing rod. This was a good chance to see what other top-tier seafood he could catch from the Bering Sea.

Maybe if he was lucky, he could catch a King Salmon. He had run out of his stock after that one time with the special fishing ground card, but now he could provide a steady supply, just not the farmed ones from New Zealand.

The dinner was set for tomorrow evening. He just needed to go home during the day tomorrow to pick up his parents, so going out to sea today wouldn’t interfere with his important plans.

The fishing boat sailed across the sea. Gu Nan stopped in an area near Sanlian Reef where the water was over three hundred meters deep.

He specifically chose this spot, considering that the Bering Sea was home to many deep, cold-water fish.

At a depth of over three hundred meters, there was a decent chance of catching an Emperor Crab, and an even greater chance of catching a Flower-blooming Crab.

Five hundred meters would be a bit too deep; there would be fewer species of fish, making it less interesting to fish.

The Fengqi Coast and Seven-Star Rock maps each had ninety ”guaranteed catch” daily attempts, and with another thirty for the whole map, he now had a total of two hundred and ten attempts.

Gu Nan set up two fishing rods and then entered a frantic fish-harvesting mode.

A fish would take the bait on one rod, and before he could even reel it in, another would bite on the other. He was so busy he couldn’t stop.

It took him a full two and a half hours to use up all two hundred and ten attempts. His previously emptying Aquarium and Chilled Storage were once again packed to the brim with seafood.

He put away the Fengqi boat rod and operated one electric reel rod, using it to fish for deep-sea species. This way, Gu Nan could manage the workload.

He kept the Seven-Star boat rod out, mainly because the seafood from Seven-Star Rock had a higher overall value, and even the lower-star fish sold better.

Taking out the blue-grade Bering Sea boat rod, Gu Nan attached a lead sinker, a bait cage filled with Antarctic shrimp, and a lure, then began to fish.

Currently, his stock of salmon and King Salmon wasn’t huge, but it would last for a few more days of sales. His main goal tonight was to see what kinds of deep-sea fish he could catch and whether they were valuable.

Before heading out, Gu Nan had also specifically swapped in a new gas canister, so he could make a late-night snack.

After a short wait, the hook and bait finally sank to the bottom. The synchronization rate of the blue-grade Bering Sea rod was only seventy percent, which he hadn’t expected.

Going by the ten percent increase per grade, a gold-grade rod would max out at ninety percent. It seemed the game didn’t allow for a one hundred percent stat.

Still, with a seventy percent synchronization rate, the fishing effectiveness was much better than before.

Gu Nan waited for two minutes. After pulling in a Russell’s snapper caught on the Seven-Star boat rod and putting it in the Aquarium, the Bering Sea rod, resting in its holder, finally showed some action.

A two-minute wait for a bite wasn’t fast by his standards, but it was at least an improvement.

Gu Nan quickly grabbed the rod, lifted it to set the hook, and then rapidly turned the handle to reel in the line.

The fish had some decent weight to it; it felt heavy on the line.

It was struggling hard, too, making the rod tip shake constantly.

But the fish clearly wasn’t a fast swimmer; Gu Nan didn’t feel a significant pulling force.

This fish was a relatively easy catch, so he took the opportunity to check the number of Russell’s snappers in his Aquarium.

It was a relatively obscure and rare species found in China’s distant waters, living in deep-sea areas two to three hundred meters down.

Anglers usually called it the Green Chicken Fish. Gu Nan had only arranged for one shipment of them so far.

But checking now, he saw he already had a small school of Russell’s snappers. He counted them: seventy-seven in total.

This fish didn’t grow very large. Even a Legendary one would only be just over sixty centimeters, not reaching seventy.

The ones Gu Nan caught using his guaranteed catch attempts were all quite large, generally over half a meter and weighing between five and seven jin.

Even the ones he caught occasionally through normal fishing were thirty to forty centimeters long and weighed two to three jin.

Because it was rare and tasted good, the fish was seldom seen on the market, so its price was quite high, selling for 230 yuan per jin.

However, the fishing season would open in a few days, and the price would drop slightly, but it would still sell for around 200 yuan.

Seventy-seven was a good number. Gu Nan arranged to ship out thirty of them, keeping the rest for now to sell after the first batch was gone.

After four or five minutes, Gu Nan finally managed to pull the fish up from the deep sea. It was a fiery red fish with a large mouth that looked like a grouper’s.

’I’ve never heard of a deep-sea red grouper before!’

At this point, he wasn’t even sure if this fish was actually from the Bering Sea. Fortunately, the game had been updated with an appraisal function.

Due to the change in water pressure, the fish’s eyes were bulging out, which looked very strange.

Gu Nan didn’t even need a landing net. He just grabbed the fishing line and lifted the nearly dead deep-sea fish onto the boat, then used the appraisal function.

[Matsubara’s Rockfish, commonly known as Rock Cod, a deep-sea fish that inhabits depths of three hundred to three hundred and eighty meters.]