The Fish I Catch Can Level Up-Chapter 141: Making a Specimen

He'd been unable to overpower the catfish with his hand pole and had been dragged into the water.
This time, he had a boat rod. He braced the butt against his fighting belt, gripped the rod with his left hand, and clamped down on the reel with his right. For a moment, the forty-to-fifty-jin alligator gar was unable to dive deeper.
The rod tip dipped and bent, groaning under the strain, and the line sliced through the water with a sharp swoosh.
The battle in the water raged on. The three other aggressive alligator gars repeatedly bit at the hooked one's body, making it thrash in frustration.
Chu Mingcheng had caught smaller ones before, and they had looked menacing enough.
This larger specimen was even more unsettling.
Its eyes looked deceptively docile, but its mouth gaped open like an alligator's, revealing sharp teeth like a row of upright iron nails. The children in the crowd were so frightened they had to close their eyes.
How could anyone want to buy and raise such an ugly creature?
And what about the people who released plecos into the wild? Were their brains really full of crap?
The alligator gar kept trying to dive, but Chu Mingcheng had used Life Conversion twice today and was full of energy.
The line was strong enough, and the gar was only forty or fifty jin. He had no intention of letting it run.
The main issue was the other three alligator gars biting at his line. If he gave any slack and they bit through the main line, it would be a real problem.
But the alligator gar's strength was considerable. He was standing on concrete, so his footing was solid.
If he'd been on grass, he would have been dragged backward, leaving two deep grooves in the ground.
Just then, the hooked alligator gar, seemingly pained by another bite, suddenly thrashed its head wildly.
After shaking off the other alligator gars, it immediately put all its strength into a dive.
An immense pulling force traveled up the rod to Chu Mingcheng's hands. This time, he couldn't lift the rod with one hand—he had to grip it tightly with both.
He was pulled forward several steps, but he immediately started moving side to side, pulling the line to make the alligator gar feel the pain and lose its leverage.
After that, the alligator gar was pulled into submission. No matter how it struggled, using all its strength, it only managed to trace a half-circle on the water's surface, its distance from Chu Mingcheng barely changing.
Seeing him fish with such skill, the angler from before was itching to get in on the action. He came over, wanting to take over and help him land it.
Chu Mingcheng wouldn't normally mind the help—it would save him some energy.
Unfortunately, only the alligator gar he caught himself would grant him Life Conversion.
Otherwise, when Zhang Wei had borrowed his rod to fish for filefish last night, how could the filefish's data panel only be at level eight?
Therefore, he had to refuse him outright, leaving the other angler both envious and disappointed.
The angler had actually re-rigged his line and was trying to chum a spot nearby to attract the other alligator gars.
But it was as if they'd seen a ghost. The three other alligator gars were hell-bent on attacking the hooked one, as if it had stolen their mates.
They swarmed around it, biting and tearing, refusing to leave.
After a long fight, and with the alligator gar having already been worn down by the previous angler, it was now on the verge of exhaustion, its strength fading.
This was Chu Mingcheng's chance to press his advantage. He glanced behind him, saw the crowd of people, and said, "Everyone, please step back a bit and give me some more space. I'm going to pull this alligator gar up."
The onlookers immediately backed away, clearing a large area. Chu Mingcheng gripped the rod with both hands, using his core strength to start pulling the alligator gar toward the bank.
The alligator gar seemed to sense its fate and put up one last burst of resistance.
But this burst was weaker than its initial struggle. Chu Mingcheng just held his ground for a moment and saw it go completely limp.
He then pulled back a few more steps, and after getting it to the bank, he moved to the grass to pull the fish ashore.
When the alligator gar's mouth broke the surface and was pulled partly onto the bank, the three other gars that had been chasing and biting it suddenly grew quiet. Then, in front of everyone, they dove deep into the water.
This left the crowd amazed, pointing and murmuring, but no one suspected it had anything to do with Chu Mingcheng.
How to deal with the caught alligator gar was a bit of a problem.
He was just about to call the fisheries department to come and handle it when a few young people, both men and women, approached.
One of the girls had been watching him since he'd started fishing.
Now that he'd landed the alligator gar, she took the initiative to come over and ask, "Hello, we're students from Xiamen University's Marine Biology department. Could you let us have this alligator gar? We'd like to make a specimen out of it."
"Of course, you can take it!" Having someone come and solve his problem was a relief for Chu Mingcheng, and he readily agreed.
The female student then took out her phone. "Let's exchange contact information. When the specimen is done, I'll send you a picture."
Chu Mingcheng was silent for a moment. He felt like there was a catch, but he had no idea.
Thinking of the specimen, he took out his phone and added her contact. "I'm going to catch the rest of the alligator gars in a bit. Could you help me make specimens of those, too? We can talk about the price."
The female student quickly waved her hands. "No need for money, no need for money. You giving us the alligator gar for free is already a huge help. It's only right that we help you make specimens."
"Alright, thank you then." After speaking, Chu Mingcheng used the fish gripper to clamp the alligator gar's mouth, pulled it onto the grass, and set it aside. Then he took out the hook, baited it with pig liver, and continued fishing.
This time, the water was still bustling with activity, which was strange, but most people didn't think much of it.
Only the other angler looked at his pig liver strangely, thinking it must be some secret bait that made the alligator gars so frenzied.
Chu Mingcheng naturally noticed this. Thinking that this happening every time would be a hassle, he was just about to leave after catching this one when the Aquatic Species Codex suddenly provided an option to turn off the 100% bite chance.
In other words, when he wanted to fish for alligator gar, he could turn on this function.
Once an alligator gar was hooked, he could turn off the function, so the other alligator gars in the water wouldn't be so frenzied.
Not only that, but in the future, if the Aquatic Species Codex presented any functions he found troublesome, he could choose to turn them off.
That made things much simpler. By three in the afternoon, he had caught all the alligator gars in the small artificial lake.
The crowd of onlookers had also changed several times. After the initial novelty wore off, there wasn't much to see.
The only ones who hadn't left were the students from Xiamen University and a few fishing enthusiasts.
Having dealt with four alligator gars, his Life Conversion count was back up to five.
He gave all four alligator gars to the students, said goodbye, and left with his fishing rod.
Driving on the road, Jiang Luoluo wouldn't be back for another two days, leaving him a bit bored and unsure of what to do.
Originally, Chu Mingcheng had planned to take Zhang Wei and Chen Yang out for some fun today, but they had gone back.
"Maybe I'll go out to sea again tonight!" With five uses of Life Conversion as backup, Chu Mingcheng temporarily didn't have to worry about being too tired.
The group chat had been asking about harlequin mantis shrimp, and he still had forty plastic bottles on the boat. He might as well go and fill them up.
So Chu Mingcheng turned the car around and headed for the pier. On the way, he ordered three large foam boxes. With the two on the boat, that made five total.
He also bought some crushed ice and filled two of the foam boxes.
If he hadn't bought two foam boxes as backup yesterday, the filefish he'd caught would probably have had to be thrown on the deck, which would have made cleaning up a lot more trouble than the simple rinse he'd given it this morning.
Finally, he contacted the fuel truck. By the time he reached the pier, the truck arrived shortly after. This time, the fuel cost was nearly four thousand yuan.
He didn't need to buy bait for now—there were still some shrimp bricks and squid bait in the cockpit refrigerator.
With everything ready, he set off.
This time, he headed south. After all, harlequin mantis shrimp were only found in the southern part of the Taiwan Strait.
After an hour and a half at sea, he arrived at the third coral reef he had discovered the day before yesterday, which was also the largest he had found so far.
He had been looking for schools of fish on the fish finder before, and since there were no schools here, he had just marked the coordinates.
It was quite far from the coast—his phone had no signal.
But he had sent messages to his parents and Jiang Luoluo before heading out, so they wouldn't worry when they couldn't reach him.
He stopped the boat and looked at the beautiful sea surface under the setting sun.
He could occasionally see a flock of seagulls flying over the sea. After getting far enough from the pier, the scenery at sea was indeed beautiful.
If he could wake up to such a view every day, regardless of whether he got tired of it, at least it would make him feel very relaxed.
Chu Mingcheng changed into his wetsuit, put on his camera, and went into the water with his fish spear. With no one around, he felt much less constrained.
The underwater coral area was the largest he had encountered so far. The deepest part was over thirty meters, and the shallowest was less than five meters.
In a place like this, it was unlikely there would be a shortage of valuable fish, but if they were all hiding under the coral, the fish finder's reaction would be minimal.
Harlequin mantis shrimp lived in shallow water, at most ten meters deep.
Chu Mingcheng first swam down to check the terrain and found small harlequin mantis shrimp burrows in the shallow water—quite a few of them. He had a good sense of the situation.
He returned to the boat and took out the bottles.
This time, he didn't just wrap the fishing line around each bottle's mouth twice—he tied a dead knot on each one to ensure the waves wouldn't wash the bottles away.
He then tied a large lead sinker to one end of the fishing line, went into the water with the bottles, and brought them to the shallow water area. He placed the lead sinker on a piece of coral and also used a large rock to press it down, ensuring the bottles wouldn't be carried away by the current.
If the fishing line was wrapped around a rock, he was afraid the friction would cause it to break.
Chu Mingcheng swam to the side and observed for a while, confirming the bottles wouldn't be carried away by the current. Then he took his trap skewers and began looking for harlequin mantis shrimp burrows.
There were more harlequin mantis shrimp burrows here than he had imagined. In just a short while, all the trap skewers were used up.
The first trap hadn't even been triggered yet. Seeing this, he decided to look around for something good.
There were plenty of sea snails and scallops in the shallow water area. No wonder there were so many harlequin mantis shrimp here—their food was also abundant.
Chu Mingcheng wasn't very interested in these. The main thing was that when he really started picking them, he would find that after a long time, he would only have a small basin that wouldn't sell for five hundred yuan.
With this time, whether he was looking for lobsters or other fish, the efficiency of making money would undoubtedly be much higher.
Soon, in a coral cluster, he found a very beautiful coral fish.
He slowly swam closer and found that it was a relatively valuable ornamental fish—a sixbar angelfish.
This fish was also called the six-banded angelfish. It was generally not eaten, with the exception of himself.
Chu Mingcheng didn't have any suitable ingredients for dinner tonight. Seeing it leaning against a piece of coral and not moving much, he picked up his fish spear and approached.
With a "thud," the fish spear pierced the fish's body and hit the coral. The six-bar angelfish was successfully taken by Chu Mingcheng.
Dinner was settled. This fish was very suitable for eating.
He clipped it to his live fish stringer and continued looking for the next target.
Then, in a crevice, he found a large spiny lobster.
These lobsters were really easy for the current Chu Mingcheng to catch. But when he pulled it out, he was stunned to find that this wasn't an ordinary spiny lobster.