As a Fisherman, My Fish Can Level Up

Chapter 62: Chapter 62: Arm Pulls Until Sour

Both of them reached the front deck, which was a bit smaller in size. Once the fishing and storage boxes were placed, there was just enough room for the two of them to move about.

Yao Xin patted Chu Mingcheng on the shoulder, “Ah Cheng, whether Brother He sets a table or not depends on you now!”

“For this meal, I’ve got to pull in at least 400 pounds!” Chu Mingcheng agreed, but under the condition of a fishing surge, he had indeed set a target of 400 pounds for himself.

Catching 400 pounds of fish wasn’t easy. Translated into numbers, it meant catching over three or four hundred of them, which was challenging even during a fishing surge.

Regardless, he was determined to attack this goal.

Chu Mingcheng pulled out his iron rod; the fish he targeted had sharp teeth, so he used a steel wire leader which was primarily to prevent biting.

And using steel wire for fishing little steel was reasonable too, both involving the word steel.

He attached a new silver-white bait with a fishy scent and started testing the water layers.

The fish had begun moving to the upper layers; as long as he could grasp their distribution, he could maintain high efficiency in continuous fishing.

The boat’s generator had already started up, and the spotlights shining on the sea surface were turned on, along with the fish-attracting lights already lowered.

The small fish and squids attracted by the lights were all prey the fish liked, creating a natural breeding ground.

Chu Mingcheng let his fishing line sink to about six or seven meters when suddenly, there was a pull—fish on!

Lift the rod, reel in, lift the rod, reel in; soon, a shiny silver little steel fish was pulled up by Chu Mingcheng.

He hadn’t expected to hit his target fish so quickly on the first try. The caught fish expanded all its fins, shimmering and struggling like a transparent scarf fluttering in the wind—it was quite beautiful.

Seeing a living fish like this was rare, much prettier than when they were dead.

This fish, including its small head and tail tip, was about forty to fifty centimeters long. Chu Mingcheng measured with his fingers; it was just three fingers wide.

Though it was quite long, its actual weight was only about four taels.

“Not bad, Ah Cheng, three fingers wide on the first one,” Yao Xin said as she also held a fish, slightly smaller than his, about two and a half fingers wide and weighing three taels.

Seeing her catch fish so quickly didn’t surprise Chu Mingcheng.

With a fishing surge, almost everyone could fish efficiently. If someone couldn’t catch fish during such times, then it certainly wasn’t the fish’s fault.

He removed the hook and threw the fish into the storage box. The fish twisted like a snake a few times, opening and closing its mouth as if it wanted to bite something.

But it quickly lay sideways motionless, probably going to die soon.

There were no live fish for sale on the market; they were too delicate to keep.

Chu Mingcheng continued fishing. At about six or seven meters, he was catching fish—clearly, it was a critical time during the biting period, and he needed to make the most of it.

As he had expected, the bait was barely five meters deep when the second fish was hooked.

Fishing specifically targeted water layers. Once finding the right one, staying at that layer meant the fish would bite fiercely.

The feeling was similar to catching a sea eel emerging from its burrow; it wasn’t good at swimming, wouldn’t drag the fishing line around, just felt a bit heavy.

This one was larger than the previous but didn’t reach four fingers’ width.

The caught fish were mostly this size; off the shore, they were primarily around four taels, with the occasional few reaching over a pound.

Once they grew to a certain size, they would head for deep sea, where you needed nets to catch them.

But this size was when they tasted best—smaller ones were good for frying, larger ones for braising.

If you got a really large one, braising it yourself might not taste as good as those prepared in restaurants.

Unless, of course, everyone had a chef like Mr. Chu at home.

In the next ten minutes, Chu Mingcheng managed to catch seven more fish, adding up to nine with the previous two.

That was the power of a fishing surge—not so much fishing as stocking up.

Not just him, He Zheng and others on the aft deck were even faster since they used gang hooks.

Each fishing line had at least five hooks tied to it, often pulling in two or three fish at a time.

Chu Mingcheng couldn’t resist seeing this, the iron plate’s efficiency was fast, but it still couldn’t match catching two or three fish at once!

He took out his No. 30 boat fishing rod and started to tie a string of hooks, using Sand Worms as bait.

During the explosive biting period, it was indeed very thrilling to fish with string hooks. The first time Chu Mingcheng lowered the rod, he noticed the fish on the hook felt much heavier than before.

Sure enough, when the fish were pulled up, one rod had exactly three fish, and each fish was uniformly sized, two were three fingers wide and one was four fingers wide.

The cost of higher efficiency was the longer duration which made his arms sore. Chu Mingcheng checked the number of times he had transformed his life energy and found that the number of Fushouluo caught today had just reached six times.

Six life transformations afraid of wasting arms?

He was determined to fish until there were no more fish under the boat today.

As time slowly passed, Chu Mingcheng was shocked to find that he had run out of the Sand Worms he bought today.

It’s a pity he hadn’t bought enough. Even though they weren’t often eaten and could be reused, there came a time when they were depleted.

Only then did he notice the soreness when lifting his arms, feeling as if he had periarthritis, and quickly used a life transformation to alleviate it.

The fish box was already full of cutlassfish, and the cutlassfish on either side of his fishing spot were also piling up; he had directly sorted the cutlassfish into three different sizes.

Chu Mingcheng realized he had caught so many, somewhat to his surprise.

His fish box had a capacity of 30 liters, normally holding around fifty to sixty pounds of fish.

The cutlassfish deliberately placed on either side of the fishing spot also weighed over thirty pounds, indicating that he had caught nearly a hundred pounds of cutlassfish in nearly four hours.

He checked the data panel and found that the cutlassfish had been upgraded to level 5.

[Cutlassfish, also known as scabbardfish (Level 5)]

[Current Experience: 13/60]

[Size +5％]

[Tastiness +5％]

[Catch Probability +5％]

He hadn’t expected to catch 163 cutlassfish, their size increasing by 5％, no wonder he found cutlassfish four fingers wide more frequently in the last hour.

At first, it took him several tries to pull up a four-finger-wide one, and he often caught two-finger-wide ones, but now the two-finger-wide ones were less frequent.

It seems that in the face of a school of fish, the Golden Finger really was useful!

“I’m exhausted, fished for almost four hours, and can hardly lift my arms.” At that moment, Yao Xin noticed that Chu Mingcheng had stopped, twisted his arms, stretched his body, and also reeled in his rod.

When she came to her senses, she realized there were already piles of cutlassfish on Chu Mingcheng’s side and was suddenly astonished, “Oh my, that’s excessive, I only have half a box.”

“I switched to string hooks, often catching two or three fish per try; of course, it was faster.”

“So you used string hooks and kept pulling for four hours?”

Yao Xin couldn’t help but pinch his arm, feeling the hard muscles and the speed of fishing, her body slightly heating up.

“Not really, I took breaks in between, it’s just that you were too engrossed in fishing to notice.”

Chu Mingcheng originally wanted to agree casually, but noticing Yao Xin’s subtly fiery gaze, he shivered, unsure if it was the night sea breeze that was too cold.

So he decisively changed his wording, surely he couldn’t let a woman like a wolf misunderstand that he had an iron arm.

“Oh, I see!” Yao Xin nodded, let go of his arm and then said, “I’ll call Brother He over to count the catch first, clear out the catches here so you can continue fishing if you want.”

Chu Mingcheng heard that she probably didn’t want to continue fishing, so he asked, “Sister Yao, you’re not continuing?” @@novelbin@@

“No, no, I can’t stay up all night, I’ll go sleep after sorting out the catches.” Yao Xin waved her hands as she spoke.

Normally she would sleep after midnight, but continuous fishing was physically demanding, and she was already very tired at this point.