I Can Fish Up Everything!

Chapter 33: Chapter 33: Big Catches at the Bridge Pier

The fish’s pull was ferocious. Gu Nan strained his right arm, only managing to hold it in a stalemate. For a moment, he couldn’t reel in any line.

Saltwater fish were just that aggressive; one weighing only three or four kilograms could match an adult man in a contest of strength.

Fortunately, the green Fengqi Fishing Rod was a clear improvement. Although the rod bent into the shape of an arch bridge, it didn’t make the groaning sounds of a rod on the verge of breaking like the white Fengqi Fishing Rod did whenever he hooked a bigger fish.

After a stalemate of about ten seconds, the fish’s strength gave out. The rod in Gu Nan’s hand slowly rose, and he quickly seized the opportunity to reel in the line.

He got two turns on the reel before the fish started pulling hard again.

They went back and forth several times, but it didn’t take long. In just over two minutes, the fish surfaced.

It was rather dark under the bridge pier. Even with the moonlight and the streetlights on the bridge above, he could barely make things out.

So, Gu Nan switched on the headlamp he was wearing and aimed it at the fish.

The fish was huge, over sixty centimeters long. It looked a lot like a pompano but was uglier, with a somewhat dopey expression.

When using a Guaranteed Hit, the fish was certain to be from the Fengqi Coast. Gu Nan was quite happy to have discovered a new species.

He just had to collect all sixteen fish in the encyclopedia to unlock the elite encyclopedia, and with it, some new and exciting features.

The fish was quite large, so he still had to be careful even though it had surfaced.

This was the most critical moment. If he got careless and the fish broke free, all his effort would have been for nothing.

Gu Nan put more strength into it, reeling in the line quickly to pull the fish toward him.

Unwilling to give up, the big fish thrashed on the surface again before diving back into the water.

The rod shuddered as a powerful force pulled on it, and they were locked in another stalemate.

Gu Nan decided to brace the rod, gripping it further up and using his core strength to lift it forcefully.

This time, the fish couldn’t resist and was yanked out of the water again.

By now, the fish was too exhausted to control its body. It lay on its side on the surface, clearly unable to fight back for the time being.

Gu Nan seized the chance to quickly reel it in. Once it was close, he took his fish gripper, clamped it precisely onto the fish’s mouth, and lifted it out.

When rock fishing, the high position makes a landing net essential. Here on the pier’s platform, however, the water was only about thirty centimeters below, close enough to reach the fish by hand.

Of course, he would still need a landing net when the tide went out and the water level dropped, or for certain types of fish.

Gu Nan lifted the fish to check its weight. 4.35 kilograms. Not bad, it was a big one, but he didn’t recognize the species.

It was hard to use a keepnet here. Besides, pompanos or trevallies of this size couldn’t be kept alive; even the small ones died quickly. The only option was to put it on ice.

Gu Nan turned and placed the fish on his tackle box, then took out a bleeding dagger and stabbed it directly in the brain to kill it.

The fish thrashed violently again, but with its flat, pompano-like body held down firmly, it went still after a moment.

He then cut its blood vessels, drew a bucket of seawater, and flushed it out, washing away a good amount of blood.

This type of fish didn’t have that much blood, though. Rinsing it with about a bucket’s worth of water was enough.

After placing the prepared fish into a foam box with ice, Gu Nan finally had time to check his encyclopedia.

He first collected two hundred Gold Coins. To his surprise, it was only a three-star fish.

Its entry in the encyclopedia was located right between the Yellowfin Gidai and the four-star Painted Sweetlips.

Catching this fish completed Quest Four, earning him three hundred Gold Coins. Combined with the encyclopedia reward and his remaining balance, his Gold Coins were back up to eight hundred.

If he went on to complete Quest One, he could get his Gold Coins back up to one thousand today and buy a new reel tomorrow.

However, reaching level two hadn’t brought any new changes, other than the experience required for the next level increasing from 100 to 200.

Gu Nan wasn’t too concerned. A higher experience requirement meant that subsequent quests would also give more experience. Overall, the pace of leveling up probably wouldn’t slow down too much.

Then, he continued reading the fish’s description.

African Pompano. Its distribution was mainly in India and the Western Pacific, with populations also found in areas like East Africa.

Its maximum length was 165 centimeters. Gu Nan understood now. No wonder the 65.8-centimeter specimen in his encyclopedia was only marked as "medium."

Flavor rating: five stars. Small to medium-sized ones were suitable for steaming or braising. Larger ones had coarse flesh, making them better for processing, curing, and drying to be eaten as fish jerky. The suggested selling price was one hundred yuan.

Even for a medium-sized one, the one Gu Nan caught was still on the larger side.

He took a photo. If it was hard to sell tomorrow, he would send it to a few of his more generous customers.

He put his phone in his pocket, turned off his headlamp to let his eyes adjust to the dark, and waited a moment until he could see clearly again. Then, Gu Nan picked up his rod, changed the leader line and lure, and removed the float.

It was now 8:30 PM. With two and a half hours left until eleven, he should be able to complete Quest One.

Not to mention, his rod’s big fish bonus was now at 15%. Even for the local fish under the pier, the proportion of those over 1.5 kilograms was much higher than elsewhere.

But unlike float fishing, he now had to fish the bottom, because big fish liked to stay deep.

He switched to a thicker leader line, a minnow lure, a larger sinker, and a bait cage.

The bait cage was filled with Antarctic krill, which would sink to the bottom along with his hook and lure.

For float fishing, you could just throw bait to create a feeding spot, but to catch bottom-dwelling fish, you had to use a bait cage to attract nearby fish and get them to gather.

This was the same technique used for bottom fishing in the deep sea.

Gu Nan cast his line. With the bail open, the line spooled out rapidly.

He waited a short while for the line to stop, estimating the depth here to be over fifty meters, then closed the bail.

Beneath the pier, fish swam at every depth. Generally, the deeper you went, the bigger the fish, so the chances of catching a large one at the bottom were very high.

At the same time, Gu Nan gently twitched his rod and slowly turned the reel, making the minnow lure mimic a small fish swimming upward.

This was a lure fishing technique, but it worked fine with a rock fishing rod too.

The Antarctic krill in the bait cage continuously released their scent. A few curious fish swam over, some attracted by the minnow lure’s movement, others by the smell of food.

Several fish circled the minnow lure, and finally, one couldn’t resist any longer. It shot forward and chomped down on it.

In an instant, the hook on the lure pierced the fish’s mouth, setting firmly.

The fish realized it had been tricked. The pain in its mouth made it struggle immediately, and it instinctively tried to flee.

The twitching of the rod tip had already alerted Gu Nan when the fish first touched the lure, so he was ready.

The moment the hooked fish started to run, he immediately yanked the rod back hard to set the hook.

The fast-swimming fish was pulled up short, stumbling in the water and coming to a sudden stop.

But this only drove the hook in deeper, sending the fish into a frenzy as it started swimming again.

Its Power was considerable, no less than the African Pompano from before. Gu Nan, on the platform, was overjoyed. ’Another big one! Coming to the bridge pier was definitely the right choice.’

Even if he couldn’t catch any Fengqi Coast fish, he could still land some of the local species here.

However, this fish was more difficult to land because it was much deeper. Gu Nan not only had to wear out its strength, but also spend time hauling it up from the bottom to the surface.

He had spent two or three minutes landing the 4.35-kilogram fish earlier. To bring a fish of similar size to the surface from this depth would take three times as long.