Chapter 497 Record Breaking
The net is closed! Zhou Chenglei told Jiang Xia to sit down.
"It's okay, I'll stand here." Jiang Xia stood in a corner where he would not get in their way, watching the people on the two fishing boats chatting with each other.
Zhou Chenglei pulled a rope to collect the net himself, and at the same time gave instructions, "Yongguo, collect it over there, pull, keep pulling, keep pulling... OK!"
"Kangping, collect them over there as well. Yes, collect them. Keep collecting them..."
They are not professional double-boat purse seine fishing vessels, and neither of the two ships has professional purse seine equipment such as net lifting machines.
Even their purse seine this time was just a net put into the sea, waiting for the fish to swim into the giant net.
So they need human efforts to pull it up.
If the operation is slightly improper, the fish will slip out from some corner and escape.
You could have used a drift net to get all the fish caught in the net.
But that would be too much trouble.
This school of barramundi is larger than the school of golden pomfret last time.
How long would it take to get all the fish out of the gillnet? Zhou Chenglei was afraid of trouble, so he thought of using two boats to cooperate with the purse seine method.
Although it is difficult and troublesome to pull up the net, if everyone cooperates well, after pulling the fish onto the boat, they can just pour them directly onto the deck without having to untie the fish one by one from the fishing net.
People are not as strong as machines, but they have flexible brains. There is nothing they cannot do. Jiang Xia watched them fiddle with it for a long time, and finally they gradually put away the big net.
Dense swarms of barramundi were tumbling and jumping in the net bag.
Jiang Xia: "If we rely on one boat, I'm afraid we won't be able to pull it up."
Zhou Chenglei: "First, use the net to catch some fish and bring them aboard."
So people on both boats took out their nets to catch fish.
Jiang Xia couldn't help, so he just handed them a basket and asked them to pour the fish they caught into the basket.
After fishing for half an hour, Zhou's father's waist ached: "If I had known we would encounter a school of barramundi, I would have sailed out in a big boat."
Zhou Chenglei asked him to take a rest, but Zhou's father did not go.
…
Two hours later, Jiang Xia fell asleep.
Zhou Chenglei saw that they had fished out almost half of the fish, and the rest should be strong enough to be pulled onto the boat, so he said, "Okay, we won't fish any more, let's pull it all up together."
Zhou Kangping asked: "How should we deal with this? Should we bring the bows of the fishing boats together? Or should we bring the two boats closer together?"
How can two fishing boats pull a fishing net together? "No need." Zhou Chenglei took a bamboo pole with a hook and stretched it across the opposite boat, saying to Zhou Yongguo, "First tie the rope on the end to the bamboo pole, and I'll pull it over."
Zhou Yongguo did as he was told.
After Zhou Chenglei tied it up, he pulled over a corner of the fishing net.
The fishing net is big enough, so as long as you operate it carefully and coordinate well, there is no need to worry about the fish slipping out.
Slowly, with the cooperation of several people, Zhou Chenglei collected the fishing net on the opposite side and gathered it into a large bag of fish.
Zhou Chenglei, Zhou's father, and Zhou Kangping worked together to pull the fish onto the boat.
Zhou Yongguo drove the boat around to the other side of their boat, and when he got closer, they jumped over to help.
After working together, several people finally pulled a large bag of fish onto the boat.
After letting go, Zhou's father sat down on the deck to rest.
It’s too heavy! We can’t use the net lifting machine, so we have to rely on manpower.
The others did the same and sat down to rest.
My hands are numb!
The palms of my hands were turned purple by the fishing nets and ropes.
Zhou Chenglei was full of energy and wanted to unhook the big bag of fish and pour it onto the deck.
When Zhou Kangping and Zhou Yongguo saw this, they stood up to help.
Zhou Chenglei: "No, I can do it alone."
Zhou Chenglei exerted force with his hands and waist, and the fish was spit out from the fishing net, jumping around on the deck.
Zhou Chenglei collected the fishing nets bit by bit and put them in order.
There were more fish on the deck than Jiang Xia had ever seen before. It felt like this was really the limit of what the ship's deck could hold. If there were any more, they would leak into the sea.
Jiang Xia asked: "Is there a hundred dan of mullet in this net?"
It is more convenient to put this kind of fish directly into baskets and sell them by the load.
There is no need to separate the fish or weigh them slowly. Selling by the load saves time and effort, and the money is about the same.
Father Zhou smiled and said, "It should be about the same."
He could catch a thousand loads of fish at a time with his big boat, but now it was already amazing for a small boat like theirs to catch a hundred loads!
One load weighs about 100 kilograms, which means this ship weighs about 10,000 kilograms.
No one has ever tried the pier in their fishing village!
If there were records for fishing in fishing villages, this would definitely be a record-breaking one!
Zhou Chenglei: "Dad, let's go back and sell the fish first, and then go out to sea tonight."
"Okay, let's go back." The boat is full of room. If they drag the net down further, if the net bursts again, it will exceed the boat's carrying capacity.
I won’t even look at the fish cages. The heavier the weight of the boat, the more fuel it consumes. It’s not cost-effective to transport so many fish around the sea.
Because it was close to the city wharf and the price at the city wharf was higher than that at the village wharf, Zhou Chenglei transported the goods directly to the city wharf to sell.
The two fishing boats caught a total of 111 loads of fish, and each load cost 13.3 yuan.
There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!
It was sold for one thousand four hundred and seventy-six dollars and thirty cents.
Everyone worked hard today, and Jiang Xia gave Zhou Kangping and the others an extra ten yuan.
The main reason was that it was not easy to pull up more than 10,000 kilograms of fish! It was almost noon when the fish were sold. Zhou Chenglei took everyone to Fumanlou for a meal before sailing back home.
When Zhou Kangping returned home, his second aunt was surprised to see him back so early: "Why are you here so early today? Have you eaten?"
Zhou Kangping washed his hands and face and said, "I ate it. Not long after Alei's boat went out to sea today, it encountered a school of barramundi. They caught more than a hundred dan of fish and returned early."
Second uncle's wife: "...More than a hundred dan? Sailing on a big ship?"
"No, just the usual two ships."
"…This luck is too good, isn't it?!"
Zhou Kangping washed his hands, wiped the water on his clothes, and then took out a red envelope: "This is the bonus red envelope given by my fourth brother's wife."
The second uncle's wife opened it and saw twenty yuan! She smiled and said, "Alei's wife is honest, you should work hard and don't cheat."
"Um."
"Now that you have a high salary, many people have come to introduce you to potential partners. Mom will find out about the other person's character and pick a good and hardworking one for you, and then let you take a look."
Zhou Kangping didn't care much. He was just a person with limited mobility, so it was good enough that the other party didn't despise him: "I'll go to sleep for a while and go out to sea in the evening."
"Okay, then go to bed! I'll save this money for you to use when you get married and build a house."
The second aunt-in-law took the twenty yuan given by her son and put it in a rusty iron can.
There is more than 1,700 yuan saved in it, all of which was earned by Zhou Kangping over the years.
Moreover, more than half of the money was earned from helping Zhou Chenglei and his wife go fishing at sea.
My son has sequelae of polio and has difficulty walking, so it is difficult for him to find a job. When he has no work, he relies on weaving fishing nets.
After all these years, I have only saved more than 700 yuan. After working for Alei and his wife for a few months, even though I work every day, I have saved more than 1,000 yuan.
Moreover, the couple is very kind. They gave everyone a salary increase after the Chinese New Year this year, and promised that if they work hard, they will get a raise every year.
In the past, the salary for going out to sea was ten yuan a day, and you only earned money when you went out to sea. Now it has changed to three hundred and sixty yuan a month, and you still get paid even when you don’t go out to sea.
Starting from the Chinese New Year, he didn't go out to sea much throughout February, but I still paid him a salary of three hundred and sixty yuan.
We gave out a 20 yuan bonus packet when we started work after the Chinese New Year.
Three hundred and eighty in total, how good does that sound? And if you go out to sea to catch squid at night, you will get an extra five yuan subsidy compared to going out during the day.
Who among the workers in the village now doesn’t envy her two sons for working for A Lei and Asen?
Now she and her daughter are also working in a small workshop in Jiangxia, earning 80 yuan a month, plus overtime pay.
The 80 yuan salary is based on working eight hours a day. Any hours beyond eight hours will be paid as overtime, which is three times the salary.
You can have four days off every month. You can take any day you want, just don’t take it together with everyone else.
Now, including overtime pay, she can earn more than 100 yuan a month! And with holidays, she earns more than a teacher!
After working for a year, your salary will also increase.
In this way, their family can earn about one thousand yuan a month and build a house in a year!
My second aunt-in-law now wishes she could work all the time to earn money to build a house and find a wife for her son.
The eldest son is thirty years old and still hasn’t found a wife.
He was poor and had difficulty moving before, so no one cared about him. But now, everyone wants to introduce him to a girl!