At three o'clock in the morning, the alarm clock rang on time, and Feng Ye woke up.
But before he could even lift the covers, he heard the pattering of rain outside the window.
The rain hasn't stopped.
He no longer needed to get up to go out to sea; he turned off the alarm and closed his eyes to continue sleeping.
What he didn't expect was that the rain would last for more than a week.
The weather finally cleared up, so we went out to sea to retrieve our shrimp traps. We ended up with a bunch of dead fish and rotten shrimp, and lost five shrimp traps that we couldn't find after searching for a long time.
However, the good weather didn't last long, and just two days later, it started raining again.
Springtime rains are plentiful and cause delays.
Not only can they not go out to sea to fish, they also can't dry fish.
Their dried fish are still being supplied to the county market; this is from last winter's stock.
The city trade plaza has been closed since before the Lunar New Year.
Unfortunately, production is limited.
Springtime is often rainy with southerly winds, making it unsuitable for drying fish.
Generally, starting from the second solar term after the Beginning of Spring—Rain Water—rainy days become more frequent.
As the proverb goes: "After the rains fall, the sky will be gloomy until the Awakening of Insects."
Until mid-March, it rained on and off, with occasional sunny days in between.
As the saying goes, one spring rain brings warmth, and ten spring rains mean you can wear only a light coat.
The weather is gradually warming up.
Everyone took advantage of the good weather and went out to sea.
This period coincides with the migration of many fish, making it a time when they are plentiful and plump.
After a winter of accumulation, the fish now have a large amount of nutrients stored up in their bodies.
Another point is that spring is the spawning season for most fish.
Therefore, the fish are particularly plump and delicious at this time, making it the perfect season for catching them.
After Feng Ye and A Can went out to sea, they immediately began trawling.
Because they didn't know what the weather would be like tomorrow, or whether it would rain again, they didn't plan to use gillnets or shrimp traps; they would just use trawl nets today.
Around 7 o'clock, they started their first netting.
With the help of the net-lifting machine, they didn't have much trouble pulling in the net and quickly dragged it to the stern of the boat.
It was a big, bulging bag; there was a lot of stuff in it.
When they hoisted it onto the boat and untied it, they found a net full of fish.
Most of the fish were Spanish mackerel and swimming crabs, along with a considerable amount of sea bass and small yellow croaker, and there were also many other fish and shrimp.
Both of them were overjoyed and quickly tidied up the trawl net and lowered it back down.
Before noon, they hauled in two more nets.
Although the types of fish caught in each net were different, they were all pretty good.
During a brief break at lunchtime, A-Can said to Feng Ye, "I want to go check out the reefs outside Treasure Island?"
"You want to go diving?"
"Well, now that the weather is warmer and the seawater temperature is just right, I want to dive down and see if there's anything sunk to the bottom."
"Alright, let's go take a look after we eat."
Feng Ye thought about it and agreed.
He knew that Ah-Can had been eyeing the cargo that had fallen into the sea from the smuggling ship for a long time.
Even when the weather was good enough to go out to sea, he dissuaded me by saying it was too cold.
Now that it's warmer, Ah-Can wanted to dive down and take a look, so we satisfied his curiosity and let him go.
Although Feng Ye thought the ship was carrying relatively light items such as clothes, shoes, fabrics, and cigarettes, it was just a guess without any evidence.
It's not impossible that it really contained something heavy, but after being soaked in seawater for so long, it's probably useless.
After a quick lunch, the two sailed to the reef area surrounding Treasure Island.
The smuggling ship still stood there, its bow raised high.
Presumably, the ship had a hole in its hull and happened to snag on a reef, which is why it didn't sink completely.
After putting on his diving gear and checking it, Ah-chan dragged his snorkel straight to the seabed.
Feng Ye watched him dive into the water without worry, and turned around to sort the seafood that had been hauled up in the net.
This net also caught a lot of mackerel, each weighing more than five or six pounds, with the largest weighing over ten pounds, and they were very plump.
It's almost time for the Spanish mackerel's spring fishing season.
However, the majority of the catch in this net was small yellow croaker, accounting for almost half.
Feng Ye muttered to himself, "It's already mid-March in the Gregorian calendar, so it's normal to have more small yellow croakers, after all, it's the small yellow croaker season..."
etc.
Is the yellow croaker season approaching?
He paused for a moment, then an idea popped into his head.
my country has four major fishing seasons: small yellow croaker, large yellow croaker, ribbonfish, and squid, all of which occur in spring and summer.
The small yellow croaker has the earliest fishing season, from late March to May in the Gregorian calendar.
Yellow croakers inhabit a wide range of open waters in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea during winter.
In early spring, when their gonads mature, they begin to migrate in groups to the coast to spawn.
Every year from March to May, large numbers of small yellow croaker migrate to the waters near the estuaries of inland rivers, choosing shallow, fast-flowing, and relatively narrow sea areas to spawn.
At this time, the fish are densely packed and move slowly, making it an excellent opportunity to catch small yellow croakers.
This is the spring season for small yellow croakers.
However, the coastlines of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea are too long, and not all places have obvious croaker seasons.
This place is one of them.
In spring, you can clearly feel that there are many more small yellow croakers, but it is not yet at the level of a true fishing season.
During the flood season, a boat full of nets is not an exaggeration, but a real sight.
The most obvious place for the small yellow croaker to spawn is the Haizhongzhou fishing ground in Zhejiang Province.
In particular, the fishing grounds south of Haizhongzhou attract large numbers of small yellow croakers during the period from the Spring Equinox to Qingming Festival, creating a "South Sea strong wind".
After the Qingming Festival, the small yellow croaker gradually moved north and gathered in the waters around Shanghai and northern Jiangsu Province, a phenomenon known as the "Northern Sea Strong Wind".
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