I Can Fish Up Everything!

Gu Nan didn’t reach out to grab it. Instead, he used his foraging hook to entice it to bite.

Seeing the red crab’s large pincer bite down on the foraging hook, he immediately lifted it and put it in the bucket. Then he shook it and shook it, managing to break off one of the red crab’s pincers.

’It didn’t matter. I’ll be putting all its meat together for lunch anyway, and its shell can go back to the sea.’

As he continued walking, Gu Nan would occasionally check the spots already submerged by the tide. Those were actually better places to find good stuff.

Unfortunately, the tide was already coming in, so many of the best finds were already underwater. That’s why low tide is the best time for foraging.

Next, Gu Nan found two large conchs and three stone crabs. The stone crabs weren’t nearly as tasty as the red crab, but they were still edible. Their shells were just incredibly hard.

This was enough. Everyone just wanted a little taste of something fresh; they didn’t need a huge amount.

Gu Nan decided to head back and help Wang Junhe prepare lunch.

When he got to Guo Xiao’s side and saw his bucket was half-full of oysters and barnacles, he was speechless.

"Brother Xiao, let’s go. We have enough."

"Whoa, I didn’t even realize I’d gathered so much. I’m getting old. My back is already killing me after just a little while."

Guo Xiao straightened up, and his back let out two loud CRACKS, making him instinctively clutch his lower back.

Gu Nan was silent for a moment, then said with mock seriousness, "Brother Xiao, these oysters aren’t going to cut it. Actually, the effect of even proper raw oysters is pretty mediocre, and you get sick of eating them every day."

"A man really needs to stay in shape. And maybe see a good traditional Chinese medicine doctor to get your body tuned up."

Guo Xiao looked utterly baffled for a second. But when he saw the teasing look on Gu Nan’s face, he retorted irritably, "What are you even thinking? I haven’t been relegated to the couch every night. It’s just a bit of lumbar strain."

"I see. Your wife must be quite the charmer. You just have to take it easy with certain... activities... at your age, Brother Xiao."

"...Get lost! I never knew you had such a dirty mind, you brat."

"Haha..."

The two of them returned to the beach and started washing their foraged catch with the large jug of bottled water Wang Junhe had brought.

Su Qing was no longer on kid duty and was lending a hand, while Wang Miaomiao sat in a chair sipping freshly squeezed juice.

Their spot was set back a bit, shaded by trees, so it didn’t feel too hot.

Still, this wasn’t the ideal season for camping. Early spring or late autumn were the truly great times for it.

After a busy morning of prep, eating steak and seafood, followed by some fruit and casual conversation, was truly delightful.

The taste of the fresh silver pomfret was incredible, which made Gu Nan wonder if he should go back and try the fish from his own farm.

An Jun was apparently planning to become a seafood vlogger. Maybe Gu Nan could freeload a meal off him in the future and get a detailed assessment of his own fish’s flavor profile.

There’s an old fishing proverb: "Even immortals have trouble catching fish at noon." It was already two in the afternoon when they got back to the boat, so they didn’t do any more fishing.

The school of silver pomfret was long gone, and the twenty or so fishing boats that had gathered in the morning had mostly dispersed.

Wang Junhe had a decent haul for the day. Besides the big one he’d bought, he had also caught about twenty silver pomfret himself, so he decided to head back.

Gu Nan wanted to keep fishing, but it wasn’t his call to make—it was someone else’s boat.

After returning to the pier and saying his goodbyes, he rode his electric scooter back to the shop, carrying a cooler box nearly full of silver pomfret.

It was just a little past three, but to his surprise, the shop door was open.

Gu Nan was a bit surprised. He poked his head inside and saw Yi Chen sitting at the counter, staring at her computer.

"Yi Chen, come give me a hand."

The cooler was heavy. With the silver pomfret, crushed ice, and melted water, it weighed around seventy or eighty jin—not something Gu Nan could easily move by himself.

"Oh, Boss, you’re back!" Yi Chen, who had been learning how to edit short videos, immediately looked up at the sound of his voice and hurried out to greet him.

Today she was wearing a pair of pink waterproof boots she had bought for herself. Unlike Gu Nan, she wasn’t very strong. Sometimes, she couldn’t net a fish on the first try, which meant the struggling fish would splash water everywhere.

After getting her shoes soaked several times, she learned her lesson and decisively bought a pair of waterproof boots to wear at the shop, changing out of them before she went home.

Gu Nan had noticed, but he hadn’t said anything. He didn’t really need them himself, so he hadn’t thought to get any for the shop initially.

Together, they lifted the cooler over to the display counter and opened the lid.

Yi Chen had guessed there were fish inside, but she hadn’t expected them to all be silver pomfret.

"Boss, are these imported, too? I’ve seen them in the supermarket before. I think they were only around ten yuan a jin. Super cheap!"

"The ones in the supermarket are imported. I caught these myself this morning. They’re much more expensive." Gu Nan grabbed the waterproof gloves, handed a pair to her, and started laying out the pomfret on the display counter one by one.

Of the eight Black-striped Small Stripes Buri he’d put out last night, only one and a half remained. The Large White Grouper was gone, too. He hadn’t checked if the green grouper had sold yet; he’d look in a bit.

"Why are the domestic ones so much more expensive? How much are you selling these for per jin?" Yi Chen asked, confused. "Isn’t it usually the imported stuff that’s pricier?"

"For silver pomfret, it’s all about freshness. The fresher, the more expensive. The bigger, the more expensive. These ones I just caught this morning—so fresh the scales haven’t even flaked off—can sell for sixty yuan a jin during the current fishing moratorium."

"The only issue is they aren’t very big; most are only three or four liang. The ones over half a jin can go for eighty. I didn’t catch any one-jin ones, otherwise I could sell them for a hundred and twenty."

"The silver pomfret imported from overseas are flash-frozen right after being caught. That deep-freezing process severely damages the texture of the meat, which is why they’re cheaper than fish that are just chilled on ice."

"By the time they make the journey here, freshness that you could rate a ten out of ten drops to a six or seven. Add in their small size, and of course the price is only going to be in the teens."

Yi Chen nodded in sudden understanding. "Oh, I see."

She still had a lot to learn about this business.

"Oh, right, let me also show you how to tell if a silver pomfret is fresh." Thinking of the various issues that could come up while selling them, Gu Nan picked one up and continued his lesson.

"Look, with a fresh silver pomfret, besides the scales being intact, another indicator of freshness is the elasticity of its belly."

"The bellies on our fish are firm. When you press down, they spring right back, which means they’re very fresh."

"If a fish’s belly has no elasticity and stays flat when you press it, then the freshness is just mediocre. Some you can even see are sunken just by looking at them. You need to pick those out, set them aside, and sell them at a steep discount—cut the price in half, maybe even down to fifteen yuan a jin."

"That much of a discount!" Yi Chen looked at the pile of pomfret, a hint of worry on her face. "We have so many... I wonder how long it’ll take to sell them all."

"Don’t worry, silver pomfret sells very well. The main thing we need to watch out for is customers handling them too much. Some people will deliberately squeeze the fish hard. You have to stop them, even if it means losing their business."

In the past, Gu Nan wouldn’t have had the confidence to say that.

But now that business was becoming more stable and daily sales seemed to be improving, he naturally didn’t mind losing a few difficult customers.

Yi Chen nodded to show she understood.

They didn’t put all the silver pomfret on display, just about a third of them. The rest they kept in the cooler, layering them with crushed ice.

Gu Nan’s plan was to try selling them first. If they didn’t move well, he’d ask some restaurants tonight if they could take the rest off his hands at once. A lower price wouldn’t matter, since he had basically no costs invested in them.

Selling them for a bit less was better than letting them get old.

Yi Chen washed her gloves, took them off, and set them aside. She was just about to pull Gu Nan over to show him the video she had worked so hard to edit last night when she was interrupted by someone who suddenly appeared at the entrance.

"Yo, Ah Nan, you’re back!" A rather haggard-looking Ji Jinxin pulled out a pack of cigarettes and gave Gu Nan a slightly fawning smile.