The Fish I Catch Can Level Up-Chapter 37: Back to Turtle Fishing

After leaving his parents' house, Chu Mingcheng swung by the car wash to pick up his vehicle.
He drove back to the old family home on Yanmen Island, went inside, and loaded all his fishing gear back into the car. He then wrangled the snakeheads, which had been resting overnight, into the fish container and loaded that up as well, making sure to leave the smallest one for Mimi.
The culter from the day before had vanished, and he suspected the cat had hidden it somewhere.
He drove to the town's wet market. His plan today was to try selling the fish himself. If it went well, he could do the same with his saltwater catches in the future. If not, he'd just have to find a stall owner and sell them at a lower price.
Chu Mingcheng bought a stack of plastic bags, then carried his fish container and an electronic scale to a small alley next to the market's back entrance to set up shop. The front entrance was strictly regulated, with no roadside stalls allowed, but the back was more relaxed. It wasn't uncommon to see people selling their own goods there.
Plenty of people were out doing their morning shopping, so the foot traffic at the back entrance was surprisingly high.
A few curious shoppers stopped by when they saw he was selling snakeheads, but they almost all walked away without a second thought when they heard the price of forty yuan per jin. It was just too expensive.
And it made sense. A single three-jin snakehead would cost one hundred twenty yuan—you could buy a lot of pork for that price.
After a while, Chu Mingcheng started to think that selling the snakeheads himself was a bad idea. He was about to pack up and see if one of the fishmongers inside the market wanted to buy them at a discount.
Just then, a middle-aged man walking by stopped and peered into the container. "Hey, how much for the fish?"
Thirty-five a jin. They're wild," Chu Mingcheng said, feeling a little less confident after a dozen people had called his price too high. He figured he'd lower it and see what happened.
"Can I take a look?"
"Of course."
The man crouched down and reached in to grab a snakehead. The fish thrashed wildly, not only breaking free from his grasp but also splashing water everywhere.
Having learned his lesson yesterday and this morning, Chu Mingcheng had already backed away, knowing exactly how fiercely the fish would struggle.
The man dodged as the fish slipped away, but still got splashed. He didn't seem to mind.
He could already tell they were genuinely wild and caught with a rod and reel. "Where'd you catch these?" he asked.
"From an abandoned pond," Chu Mingcheng answered honestly, remembering his father's advice from the night before. He knew what the man was concerned about. "I kept them in clean water overnight, so they're perfectly fine to eat."
"Alright, I'll take the biggest one," the man said, pointing to the largest fish in the container. He then pulled out his phone and made a call.
"Ah Hai, I'm at the market. Found some really nice wild snakeheads, they look clean. You want one? I can bring it over."
"Yeah? How big? The smallest one he has here looks to be at least three jin."
"Okay, okay, got it."
He hung up and immediately made two more calls. Finally, he put his phone away and said to Chu Mingcheng, "Can you weigh out three more for me? Around three jin each."
"You got it!" Chu Mingcheng felt a renewed sense of motivation. He'd finally made a sale, and a big one at that.
The largest fish was five jin and three liang. The other three weighed in at two jin nine liang, three jin three liang, and three jin six liang. The total came to 528.50 yuan, but Chu Mingcheng rounded it down to 525.
Selling things was strange like that. Once one person took the lead and bought something, business would naturally follow.
Not long after the middle-aged man left with his fish, a young couple came by. The wife had a craving for pickled vegetable fish soup, and when she heard the snakeheads were wild, she immediately decided to buy one.
By the time he sold the last fish, it was already nine in the morning. It had taken him over two hours.
Chu Mingcheng did the math. He had sold a total of forty-six jin and six liang for 1,610 yuan, having knocked off twenty-one yuan by rounding down for his customers.
If he had sold them to a fishmonger at thirty yuan per jin, he would have only made 1,398 yuan. The extra two hundred twelve yuan was definitely worth a couple of hours of his time.
After packing up, Chu Mingcheng went back into the market and bought five jin of pork liver.
Now that he knew how valuable—and easy to sell—wild soft-shelled turtles were, there was no reason to do anything else. Once the abandoned pond was fished out, he could always try the reservoir. A reservoir that big had to have turtles in it.
But first, the apple snails had to go. There wasn't much flammable wood left around the pond; he'd burned most of it yesterday. So today, he'd come prepared, having bought a bag of charcoal to bring with him.
Arriving back at the abandoned pond, Chu Mingcheng first tossed two jin of pork liver into the water as groundbait. He then set up his rod, baited the hook, and propped it up on a stand. With that done, he left it for the time being and got to work with his net, scooping up apple snails.
He had cleared most of them from the pond's edge yesterday, but after a single night, more had appeared, though not as many as before.
He spent about half an hour scooping and picking up snails, giving the groundbait time to work its magic. Then, he finally picked up his fishing rod and cast the line into the water to start fishing for turtles.
The pond was small, so any food in the water would quickly attract its inhabitants. Groundbait was far more effective here than in a vast reservoir.
Yesterday morning, he had caught five turtles in just two hours. Today, starting at ten, he only managed to catch one large turtle of about four jin, one snakehead, and three catfish. He decided he would see how things went in the afternoon when the temperature dropped. If the fishing didn't pick up, he wouldn't bother coming back to this spot.
He ate lunch out again and spent the afternoon burning more apple snails.
Around three o'clock, he threw in the remaining two jin of pork liver as more groundbait, then doused the fire with water. He had burned fewer snails than yesterday, bringing the grand total to 343, which meant he now had three uses of Life Conversion.
The afternoon fishing session was much longer, lasting until after seven in the evening, but the results were once again fantastic.
He caught a total of seven wild soft-shelled turtles, the smallest weighing two jin and the largest five jin. Including the one from the morning, that was one more than yesterday.
It made sense, he thought. The pond wasn't that small, and he'd even caught a ten-plus jin monster the day before. A wild turtle needed at least a decade to grow that large, which was one of the reasons it could fetch a price as high as eight thousand yuan—they were just that rare. A farmed one could probably reach ten jin in just two or three years.
The presence of a ten-year-old turtle meant the population in the pond was self-sustaining. Even if food was scarce, it was unlikely that six or seven turtles would be all he could catch.
He also caught a lot of catfish today, all of which he released. He only caught five snakeheads in total. He wasn't planning on selling them right away, deciding instead to raise them at home and sell them when he had the time.
Packing up his gear, he once again headed back to his old home on Yanmen Island for the night.
He placed the turtles in one fish container and poured in fresh water to keep them alive, then put the snakeheads into another.
Chu Mingcheng went to check on Mimi. The cat was very well-behaved around him now and would immediately come closer whenever she saw him.
After petting the cat for a while, he took a shower and flopped onto the bed in the attic. Chu Mingcheng stretched out with a sigh of deep satisfaction. It was just more comfortable sleeping here.