Chapter 277 Part 2: Jiang Luoluo: I Won't Agree to That! (Patreon)

After dinner, they cleaned up.​

Chu Mingcheng had Jiang Luoluo go to the cockpit to steer the boat in a circle around the outer edge of the reef while he dropped the crab cages, including the shrimp pots.​

Once that was done, he also came to the cockpit, stopped the boat above the trench, and sat at the stern to fish at night.​

"Wow, so many fish here?" Jiang Luoluo looked at the fish finder in surprise.​

"Yeah, I caught some Japanese Rubyfish here this afternoon. This fish isn't cheap—at least one hundred eighty yuan per jin."​

"Mm! I'll go do some yoga first, then come fish with you later."​

Jiang Luoluo was itching to get started; making money was urgent.​

But thinking about what she'd eaten tonight, she hesitated, feeling her figure was more important. So she prepared to go to the dance studio to exercise before coming out.​

But before leaving the cockpit, she seemed to remember something and turned back to warn him, "Don't you dare come over. I'm locking the door."​

This wasn't her inviting him with reverse psychology; it was based on previous experiences that had left her genuinely scared.​

Chu Mingcheng hadn't intended anything, but Jiang Luoluo's warning actually made him feel a little restless.​

But the principle of not overdoing it, he understood. So he smiled awkwardly, "I'll be fishing tonight—no time, no time..."​

"Hmph!" Jiang Luoluo gave him a charming eye-roll and left the cockpit.​

Because he wasn't planning to fish all night, Chu Mingcheng indeed didn't have any improper thoughts tonight.​

Besides, he'd been idle earlier!​

When a man is bored, he basically only does three things, right?​

After eating, "beat" the wife.​

Before sleeping, "beat" the wife.​

After waking up, "beat" the wife.​

Turning on all the deck lights, Chu Mingcheng took two electric jigging rods to the stern and mounted them on the gunwale.​

He took out the frozen squid to thaw; this would be the bait for tonight's fishing.​

Next time, Chu Mingcheng thought, he could buy some cheap but effective Antarctic shrimp bricks. Whether for chumming or baiting when fishing for deep-sea fish, they were better than these frozen squid.​

The squid would take a while to thaw. Chu Mingcheng got up to check the live well situation.​

The Spiny Pandalid Shrimp had another three that weren't moving. The pomfret also had a few belly-up. The deep-sea fish he'd caught earlier were mostly lying flat now. Although still alive, they definitely wouldn't last the night.​

It seemed keeping these deep-sea fish alive was unrealistic. Pulling them up, due to the water pressure, they had already determined they wouldn't live long.​

Chu Mingcheng simply scooped out these dozen or so deep-sea fish, put them in a foam box, and moved them to the refrigerated hold for live freezing.​

He took the Spiny Pandalid Shrimp out directly, peeled them, and fed them to the sea lions.​

As a result, Little Black smacked its lips, tilted its head, and looked completely bewildered.​

It seemed to be asking, "Master, did you really just feed me something?"​

"You eat like Zhu Bajie. Even the best food is wasted on you!" Chu Mingcheng laughingly scolded, patting its head. He then scooped out the pomfrets that weren't doing well and fed them to the sea lions.​

The sea lions weren't actually very hungry, but they swallowed the food anyway.​

They couldn't eat much, but a few fish were no problem.​

Little Black couldn't understand the words, but it still rubbed against his hand affectionately.​

Next, Chu Mingcheng brought out two foam boxes. Currently, more than half of the foam boxes had been used. Including the two in his hands, only six remained in the storage room.​

He went to the refrigerated hold and brought out a box of crushed ice. These were frozen using water by himself.​

He added some water to help thaw them. Once the ice blocks separated from the box, he poured them out, took a hammer, smashed them into pieces, then spread the crushed ice inside the foam boxes, ready to store fish later.​

Otherwise, catching a fish and having to put it in the refrigerated hold each time would be too troublesome.​

With everything prepared and the squid thawed, he chopped them up and put them into the chum cage on the fishing line.​

He baited the hooks on both rods with small squid, opened the bail on the electric reels, and the sinkers, carrying the bait, immediately plummeted downward rapidly.​

Until the bait reached the trench, he locked the bail, waited for the fish to bite, and simultaneously activated the Fish Gathering function.​

He knew the situation underwater very well. Japanese Rubyfish were numerous, but the proportion of meter-long fish wasn't high.​

Occasionally, a small school could be seen, but the vast majority were only fifty to sixty centimeters long. These were the main forces of the school.​

Therefore, after activating the Fish Gathering function, even if he couldn't catch large ones, he could at least catch fat ones.​

The bait had just gone down, not even a minute had passed, and the fishing rod reacted—a fish was hooked.​

He immediately pressed the button, and the line was quickly retrieved. It seemed the fish wasn't large; the electric reel's retrieval speed was very fast.​

But before this fish was even brought up, the other rod also hooked something.​

Using an electric reel for fishing meant he didn't have to manage it himself.​

The first fish was quickly pulled to the surface. Chu Mingcheng looked—it was a Japanese Rubyfish, fifty to sixty centimeters long, but with a fat belly.​

Wearing gloves, he grabbed the line directly and lifted it up.​

He didn't bother with the caught fish. The sea lions, under his command, had run to the foredeck and wouldn't come over to steal his fish.​

As for Mimi and the others, they'd eaten their fill tonight and were lying flat. They had no interest in these raw fish now.​

After the second Japanese Rubyfish was pulled up, Chu Mingcheng finally squatted down to remove the hooks.​

The fish's sharp teeth had somewhat mangled the small squid, but it could still be used for now.​

So he took the hook and bait directly out of the fish's mouth and set it aside, ready to continue fishing later.​

As for the Japanese Rubyfish on the deck, because of the water pressure, their stomachs had already protruded from their mouths.​

Having learned from the previous deep-sea fish, he knew these fish wouldn't survive. So he bled them before tossing them into the nearby foam box filled with crushed ice.​

He then stood up, tossed the baited hooks back into the water, and continued fishing.​

The bite rate at night was excellent. With the help of the Fish Gathering function, both rods, apart from the time he spent bleeding the fish, were basically never idle.​

By the time Jiang Luoluo finished her yoga and came out, he had already caught one and a half boxes of Japanese Rubyfish, with not a single other fish species among them.​

"Is this the Japanese Rubyfish? It looks so ugly!"​

Jiang Luoluo approached, first looking at the fish, then wrinkling her nose slightly in disdain. Clearly, the fish's appearance earned a low score from her.​

"As long as it tastes good. Once it's finished, I'll cook it using a method you've never seen before."​

Meeting this high-grade sashimi fish, Chu Mingcheng could finally put some of the things he'd bought to use.​

He'd originally intended to use them on tuna, but since he hadn't encountered any tuna weighing dozens of jin yet, he could only practice on this fish first.​

"Tonight? Eating fish as a late-night snack?" Jiang Luoluo asked, surprised.​

Chu Mingcheng shook his head. "Not that fast. It'll take several days. Tonight, I just need to do the initial preparation."​

"Really? What method is it?" Jiang Luoluo was clearly intrigued and pressed him.​

"No rush—you'll know when the time comes." Chu Mingcheng continued to keep her in suspense.​

"Aiya, just tell me~!"​

"Then..." Chu Mingcheng saw her keen desire for knowledge, leaned close to her ear, and whispered a few sentences.​

Jiang Luoluo's face immediately flushed red upon hearing it, and she refused outright, leaving no room for negotiation. "No way, impossible. I won't agree to that."​

Chu Mingcheng hadn't expected such a strong reaction from her, especially since he'd only made a small request.​

"Then you'll just have to wait."​

"I'll know tonight anyway—no rush." Jiang Luoluo said, then poked his head playfully with a cute fierceness, complaining, "What kind of things are you thinking about all day?"​

"Let's fish, let's fish. You fish later, and I'll handle the fish. It'll be faster that way." Chu Mingcheng chuckled twice and changed the subject.​

Jiang Luoluo didn't dwell on it either. She rolled her eyes at him, then went to operate the fishing rod to help him fish.​

With her help, Chu Mingcheng only needed to grab the line, lift the fish onto the deck, bleed it, and toss it into the foam box, making the process much more efficient than before.​

Jiang Luoluo found fishing quite relaxing too—just hang the bait and operate the electric reel.​

The night sea breeze dispersed the day's heat, feeling very comfortable against the skin.​

The only downside was that after being blown for a long time, your body would feel sticky.​

Time passed until ten-thirty at night, when Chu Mingcheng stopped tonight's night fishing.​

Mainly because he had already caught four boxes of Japanese Rubyfish, plus sixteen large fish that weren't put in boxes.​

The fish in the boxes were relatively uniform in size, ranging from forty to seventy centimeters.​

Chu Mingcheng estimated the total weight should be around four hundred jin, averaging about one hundred jin per foam box.​

The other sixteen Japanese Rubyfish were larger. Besides five-meter-long ones, the rest were close to a meter.​

The total weight was roughly six hundred jin. Tonight, he had caught over a thousand jin of fish—a bountiful harvest.​

The fish were all processed by Chu Mingcheng and placed in the refrigerated hold for freezing.​

However, one fifty-centimeter fish was not put inside—this was reserved for his own consumption.​

He hadn't eaten Japanese Rubyfish before, after all. It was normal to want to try it, and he also wanted to know why it was considered a high-grade sashimi fish.​

"Luoluo, you go shower first. I'll handle this fish and then come." After cleaning up the tools and rinsing the bloodstains off the deck, Chu Mingcheng picked up the fish and said.​

"Don't you try to ditch me. I want to see exactly how you're going to prepare this fish." Jiang Luoluo hadn't forgotten this point and had no intention of leaving.​

Chu Mingcheng didn't mind either. At worst, they could shower together later to save time.​

He first scaled the fish on the deck, gutted it, removing the internal organs, and then took the processed fish into the kitchen.​

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