"Brother Yang, the Dragon King's descendants are almost all caught by us now. If we want to fish, we might not be able to catch big ones," Liu Maosheng and Zheng Weiguo said when they heard Chen Yang going to the river to fish, and immediately offered to go with him.
After all, they had been fishing for so long; their experience was definitely richer than Chen Yang's. The main thing was that Chen Yang couldn't swim, and if he fell into the water by the river, what would happen? With them there, at least his safety would be guaranteed.
"The two little ones at home want to eat fish and quail eggs. What can a father do?" Chen Yang gave a wry smile, this was the stubbornness of a father. The children were waiting expectantly at home; how could he refuse?
"Alright, if our nephew and niece want to eat, we'll have to get some big catches today." Upon hearing that it was the two children, Chen Mengyan and Chen Hao, who wanted to eat fish, Zheng Weiguo and Liu Maosheng immediately went to get their gear. Fishing nets, baskets, old equipment. This fishing net was bought for them by Chen Yang himself.
Upon reaching the riverbank, the three of them rowed a small sampan towards the reeds. Many people think that the Yangtze River basin has no reed marshes, considering them a northern specialty. This is not the case. The Jiaogang Lake in Anhui Province, formed by over a dozen rivers from places like Ying Shang and Lu An, has extremely rich wetland resources, known as a thousand li of blue waves and ten thousand mu of reed marshes, and is called the East China Baiyangdian. Although it's not as good as the real Baiyangdian, it's not bad either. The Qinghe City area also has a small number of reed marshes. As autumn approaches, migratory birds from the north are already starting to fly here to spend the winter. In another month or two, the reed marshes will be truly lively. Those who come here to fish often come to have a good meal. They can usually find a few bird nests, and if they are lucky enough to catch a wild bird, they can reward their stomachs well. In those days, there was no concept of protected animals. People couldn't even fill their stomachs, so how could they think of protecting birds? They ate whatever they caught. However, most waterfowl meat is very fishy. In those days, there weren't many seasonings, and the reed marshes were so vast, and the birds were too smart. Most people couldn't catch them, so no one went to catch birds on a large scale.
Chen Yang thought catching fish was simple, after all, he saw everyone selling fish by the basket when he was collecting fish before. However, along the way, he watched Zheng Weiguo and Liu Maosheng cast dozens of nets. Except for a few small fish and shrimp, they didn't catch a single fish weighing over half a jin. They disdained these small fish and shrimp, shook them off the net, and threw them back into the river. If they didn't catch small fish under a palm's width, they wouldn't be able to catch fish from the river in the future. This year, there was already severe overfishing, so later everyone had a tacit understanding: small fish caught were directly released.
"Brother Yang, this time it's good, we've got something, we've got something! We caught a nest of river crabs. These big ones are quite good, probably weighing two liang." This time, Zheng Weiguo finally had a harvest. River crabs usually hide in rock crevices, and it's rare to find a nest of river crabs together. This time, they were near the edge of the reed marsh, probably because the river crabs came out to forage. With one cast of the net, they caught four or five not small river crabs.
"Put these in the basket. If we can't catch fish, we can steam some crabs to let the two little ones taste something new." The two little ones had never tasted crabs before, so Chen Yang kept them.
Liu Maosheng saw Zheng Weiguo getting a catch and cast his net with all his might. His net didn't catch crabs or fish, but it did catch some crawfish. Back then, not many people ate these things. They were mostly shell with little meat, and very fishy. Crawfish only became popular much later. In Guangdong Province, with the establishment of special economic zones, by the 21st century, workers from all over the country gathered. At that time, roadside eateries were popular, and with various seasonings to cook them, the fishy smell of crawfish could be masked. This made something that villagers didn't even eat once, become popular, and even sold for seventy to eighty yuan per jin. In the past, in rural areas, when they were rampant in the summer, they were caught and fed to chickens and ducks. In any small river, stream, or even ditch, if you tied a frog's leg to a rope and dropped it in, you could get one every few minutes. In less than half a morning, you could catch a bucket of crawfish. Fishing for crawfish is probably a childhood memory for many children in southern China born in the 80s and 90s. Back then, crawfish, river mussels, and snails were everywhere in the rivers. Later, due to the overuse of pesticides and fertilizers, the croaking of frogs could no longer be heard in many fields, and even tadpoles were all poisoned. Coupled with frequent washing of pesticide barrels and discarding medicine bottles by the river, even fish and shrimp in the rivers often died in large numbers. By the 2000s, many children had never even fished for crawfish.
Liu Maosheng was a bit annoyed and was about to throw the uneaten crawfish back into the river. "Maosheng, keep them all. These things are delicious." Chen Yang had tasted crawfish from his previous life, with flavors like spicy, mala, thirteen-spice, and garlic. In the summer, breaking open the shell, sucking the soup from the crawfish, peeling the tail meat, and popping it into your mouth, followed by a glass of iced beer. That heavenly taste was worth more than being an emperor.
"Alright, Brother Yang, you like these things? You should have said so earlier. We often caught them when fishing before and threw them away." "It's past the peak season for crawfish now, otherwise, their size would be quite large." Liu Maosheng was still troubled that he hadn't caught anything for Chen Yang, but unexpectedly, Chen Yang liked crawfish.
"It's just for fun. I'll try to make them when we get home later. If they're not tasty, we'll just feed them to the chickens." Chen Yang wasn't sure if he could make them taste good with the existing seasonings, he was just trying it out. If crawfish could be made as delicious as in his previous life now, they wouldn't have waited so long to become popular on the Chinese dining table.
They rowed along the reed marsh for almost a mile. They didn't see any bird nests, but they did net a small basket of river crabs and crawfish.
"Splash." Chen Yang watched Zheng Weiguo and the others casting their nets for fun, so he also cast a net. However, he didn't control the force well. The net was quite heavy, and the sampan was already unstable. When he wasn't careful, he was dragged by the net and fell into the water.
"Brother Yang, be careful." Fortunately, Zheng Weiguo was quick to react and pulled him back onto the boat. However, Chen Yang's clothes were soaked, and he almost choked on water. It was no wonder, he was a complete non-swimmer.
"Hey, Weiguo, look! Isn't that a big grass carp in the net? It's still splashing water." As Chen Yang climbed back onto the boat, he suddenly felt movement in the net he was holding. He didn't expect that his fall into the water had actually startled a big fish.
"Brother Yang, you're exploding fish with your body! You cast nets all the way without catching a single fish, but you fell into the water with the net and directly startled a big fish." Zheng Weiguo quickly helped pull in the net. They had finally caught a big fish, they couldn't let it escape.