The Fish I Catch Can Level Up

Chapter 217: Trolling for Tuna

It was nearly two in the morning.

Chu Mingcheng had finished his late-night snack long ago and chatted with the others for a good while. Once the food in his stomach had mostly digested, he was ready to head back to rest.

The fishing was still excellent at night, but with no pressure to break even—in fact, having already made a tidy profit—he had no intention of pulling an all-nighter like some of the other fishing fanatics.

Truth be told, night fishing always yielded the best bite and, under normal circumstances, the biggest daily hauls.

But going out to sea was exhausting work, and messing with your sleep schedule was brutal on the body.

Health was more important than money.

Chu Mingcheng had his Life Conversion ability, but unless absolutely necessary, it was best saved for critical moments.

Seeing that everyone was turning in, Zhang Wei stood up and followed behind Han Baola, planning to grab some overnight pads from her to be safe.

He'd just gotten to his feet when his stomach did a little flip.

Zhang Wei didn't think much of it. It was just his digestive system at work, getting ready to expel some excess gas.He deliberately slowed his pace, putting some distance between himself and the others. A quick glance left and right—no one was there.

So, he subtly lifted one side of his rear. "Pfft…! Pfrrrt-pfrt-pfrt!"

Chu Mingcheng, walking ahead, stopped dead in his tracks and turned around, curious.

The sound had been a bit too loud. It didn't seem like it was just air.

The moment he turned, he saw Zhang Wei, frozen solid, his face a mask of utter despair.

Remembering the oilfish he'd eaten earlier, it all clicked. Chu Mingcheng burst out laughing. "No way! After eating escolar, you still trust a fart?"

Zhang Wei wanted to die. Just as he was about to get back to his room, he'd achieved complete social suicide.

If he'd just held it in a little longer, gotten the pads, and made it back to his room, everything would have been fine.

So why, oh why, did he have to trust that fart?

Zhang Wei was filled with regret, but there was nothing he could do. He could already feel the telltale greasy slide.

The others held back their laughter and escorted him back to his room first. Han Baola immediately handed over her overnight pads, saving him from waking up to a stain on his bed tomorrow.

The next day, Zhang Wei was relieved to discover he wasn't the only one leaking oil.

His "good buddies" who'd asked for a piece of his fish were now leaking right along with him!

Whatever their reasons for eating it, in this moment, they were brothers in misery.

The group of them even gathered together, skipping fishing for two straight days to stay in their rooms and play cards.

Don't get the wrong idea—it was a proper card game, the kind with bombs.

Chu Mingcheng didn't focus much on fishing for those two days either, spending his time teaching Jiang Luoluo how to freedive instead.

She was now comfortable with the Frenzel maneuver, and her dynamic apnea had reached one minute and thirty seconds. She was officially a beginner.

But it wasn't just Jiang Luoluo practicing these past two days. Chen Yang and Han Baola had joined in too.

Chen Yang was training with a purpose, swimming freestyle every day to build up his fitness.

Only by improving his physical condition could he quickly advance his freediving skills.

As for Han Baola, Chu Mingcheng had assumed she already knew how to freedive, but it turned out she'd only tried scuba diving a few times. He had to teach her from scratch.

Jiang Luoluo had told her about his idea for a club, and she was very interested.

Mainly, since the club hadn't been established yet, she could continue her travels.

Secondly, she was staying in China because the competition in the Korean peninsula was too fierce—she wasn't confident she could find a suitable job.

And even if she did, the toxic workplace culture there was something she, having lived in China for four years, found hard to accept.

Right now, she could make a decent income just by sharing videos in China.

While the money wasn't huge, it was enough to support her travels.

And if she joined Chu Mingcheng's club in the future, she'd have a formal job.

Their Nansha trip continued. Ten days passed in the blink of an eye. Including the three-day return journey, the anglers aboard still had over a week of fishing left.

Over the past ten days, the Sky High had moved to four different fishing spots, nearly circumnavigating the Nansha Islands.

But they still hadn't encountered the schools of marlin and tuna that Chu Mingcheng was dreaming of.

While deep-sea fish were also valuable, with his already impressive haul, he was more interested in challenging himself with a monster catch.

Like the Southern Bluefin from before—that had been a thrill, and landing it had given him a huge sense of accomplishment.

On February 22nd, 2023, Chu Mingcheng woke up naturally a little after six-thirty in the morning.

He hadn't been staying up too late to night fish, so his sleep schedule hadn't gotten messed up.

Looking out the window, the early morning sun was already shining on the sea surface.

He got up, washed his face, and then went to Jiang Luoluo's room to get her for breakfast in the dining hall.

Today's breakfast was seafood congee again. If there was one thing they had in abundance at sea, it was seafood.

Anyone who dreamed of unlimited seafood just needed to spend ten days or half a month at sea, and they'd never mention it again.

After slowly finishing his breakfast, Chu Mingcheng sighed.

So many days at sea were tough. He was even starting to regret coming to the Nansha Islands.

A few days of sea fishing was enough. A whole month could really drive a person crazy with boredom.

It wasn't just them—many of the anglers had lost their passion for fishing.

Now, day or night, the deck was full of empty fishing spots, a stark contrast to the first few days.

"Luoluo, want to go diving today?" Chu Mingcheng looked at the sea surface, noticed some coral reefs poking out in the distance, and suggested.

Jiang Luoluo shook her head. "No, we'll be back at the pier in about ten days. I'm planning to choreograph a new dance during this time so I can start filming when we get back to Xiamen."

"Won't that be too tiring?"

"Not really. The main thing is, I've been neglecting my fans for too long."

"Alright then. I'll go do some trolling today."

Chu Mingcheng walked Jiang Luoluo back to her room, then called Chen Yang and the others to go trolling with him.

Zhang Wei and Han Baola made one team, and he and Chen Yang made the other, which worked out perfectly.

Everyone had had a great haul on this Nansha trip. Even Han Baola, who'd caught the least, had a catch worth over seventy thousand yuan, a profit of more than thirty thousand after deducting costs.

So they didn't care about the cost of renting a boat.

The trolling luck was pretty good today. Chu Mingcheng and Chen Yang each caught some threadfin shad, which were more valuable than Spanish mackerel.

But this didn't satisfy him. He'd specifically brought his own trolling rod, hoping for a monster.

"Sigh, tuna, oh tuna, why won't you show yourselves?" Chu Mingcheng switched his lure to a large metal jig. That should stop the threadfin shad from biting, right?

"What are you talking about, tuna? Besides dogtooth tuna, what other kind have we seen this whole time?" Chen Yang couldn't help but retort after hearing him muttering.

Compared to Chu Mingcheng and Zhang Wei, he was the unluckiest of them all. After all this time in Nansha, he hadn't caught a single fish over a hundred jin.

The biggest was a seventy-something-jin dogtooth tuna, followed by a fifty-something-jin greater amberjack.

He'd also wanted to catch something over two hundred jin, but he just didn't have the luck.

"This kind of thing is pure luck. If you don't talk about it, it won't appear. The moment you start talking, maybe it'll show up," Chu Mingcheng said with a laugh, casting his line.

With the small boat moving, the line was quickly let out over a hundred meters.

Normally, you wouldn't let out that much line when trolling—it would make it harder to reel the fish in.

But it depended on the target fish. Since Chu Mingcheng wanted to catch a large tuna, he naturally had to let the line out longer and let the lure sink deeper.

The small boat's speed was currently about ten knots, which was perfect for trolling.

If the boat was too fast, many fish wouldn't be able to keep up.

But there was one advantage—you were more likely to hook a tuna or a billfish, because those two were fast enough.

The large metal jig sped through the water like a swimming mackerel, quickly attracting the attention of some nearby predators.

Chu Mingcheng was casually holding the trolling rod in its holder when a huge force suddenly struck. The rod was instantly bent into a deep arc.

The line screamed out, dozens of meters gone in the blink of an eye.

Chen Yang was astonished. "Did you really just talk it into existence?"

"Haha!" Chu Mingcheng was instantly energized. He tried to lift the rod but found he couldn't budge it at all. He could only watch as the line flew out.

This made him even happier. It was clearly a bigger fish than he'd imagined.

The boatman was experienced and immediately began to slowly reduce their speed.

If the boat was too fast, it would be much harder for Chu Mingcheng to fight the fish, and there was a higher risk of the line snapping.

And they couldn't just let the line run out indefinitely—otherwise, the thousand meters on the trolling reel wouldn't last long.

As the boat slowed, Chu Mingcheng, who had his hand pressed against the reel, finally breathed a sigh of relief. The line was under control.

He wasn't using an electric reel today, but a conventional one, so he had to reel it in himself.

Before, with the boat's speed and the fish's pull, he couldn't stop the line from running out at all.

Now that the line had stopped running and the rod wasn't bent as severely as before, Chu Mingcheng slowly tightened the drag.

With the drag locked, the rod bent into a deep arc again, but it wouldn't break.

The boat kept moving, though slowly. The fish couldn't compete with the boat's power, and its stamina was rapidly being drained.

Chu Mingcheng took the opportunity to lift the trolling rod out of its holder. He held it in his arms, pulled back hard, and quickly reeled in the line.

If he left the rod in the holder, turning the handle would be difficult, and who knew how long it would take to land the fish.

He repeatedly lifted the rod and cranked the handle, locked in a back-and-forth battle with the beast in the deep.

At this moment, Chu Mingcheng was like a relentless fishing machine, never pausing for a rest with the boat's help.

With such high-intensity battling, Chen Yang, standing beside him, would have probably lasted five or six minutes at most before needing a break.

But that would also give the big fish a chance to recover, meaning it would take even longer to pull it up.

Ten minutes passed, and a tuna about one and a half meters long appeared on the surface of the sea.

It was already on its side, clearly having exhausted most of its stamina.

That wasn't surprising. It had to fight against both the pull of the small boat and Chu Mingcheng. Even if it was built like a little tank, it couldn't stand up to that kind of abuse.

"Huh, it's a bigeye tuna!" The fish was finally pulled alongside the boat. Chu Mingcheng had thought it was a yellowfin, but this was an even better surprise.