The Fourth Team's fish-catching frenzy brought on by the flooding in East Big Ditch lasted almost a week before dying down.
The floodwaters had actually receded after five days, but afterward the villagers ran everywhere, collecting fish left in hollows that still held water.
At this point, a scoop net was all they needed at most, so Li Juan and Li Qiang still took Mingming and Haohao all over the place. East Big Ditch was crowded, so they went to Lumao Canal and still caught plenty of fish every day.
Of course, even more fish died and rotted in the ditches.
The flood had affected an enormous area. Although the upper, middle, and lower reservoirs upstream of East Big Ditch were not being used for fish farming yet, just imagine how many wild fish they contained.
Even if only a quarter or a fifth had escaped with the floodwaters, with most entering Big Haizi and only a tenth dying, it was still an astronomical number from an individual's perspective.
There had to be several tons, at least.
In any case, whenever Li Long went to check the cotton fields again, he felt there was a stench of rotten fish drifting through the air.
Things were a little better at Little Haizi. The flooding lasted only three days before the water level fell, and Li Long and the others lowered the floodgate.
They had to maintain the water level in Little Haizi, or it would not support large fish. He certainly did not want it to contain nothing but palm-sized crucian carp thirty or forty years later.
They tasted good, sure, but they were no sight to look at.
If you wanted to admire fish, it had to be those larger wild common carp. They looked so beautiful.
Li Long only