Ye Yaodong steered the boat toward the distant sea. When they first set out, headlamps still flickered all over the water, but they grew fewer as he went farther out, each boat heading for the fishing grounds its crew knew well.
Father Ye used the time underway to chop up bait and bait the hooks. There were assorted small fish, small shrimp, and small squid. A-Cai had also tossed in five dead little conger eels for bait, and Father Ye chopped those up and hooked them too.
They had been underway for over an hour, and the hooks still weren't all baited. There were simply too many of them, and cutting up the bait and putting it on took time.
Ye Yaodong had deliberately chosen another new fishing spot today, far from the waters where they had worked yesterday.
He watched ahead intently, keeping the boat on course. To avoid hitting a reef in the darkness, he swept his headlamp over the water to the left and right from time to time.
Just then, a huge number of seabirds appeared in his field of vision over the sea ahead, blotting out the sky. The whole long stretch of coastline was almost entirely covered in birds, seemingly too many to count.
Every fisherman knew that large gatherings of seabirds usually meant schools of fish. The water ahead had yet to come into view, but so many birds were already flying in an unbroken mass overhead that the school beneath them had to be substantial.
His eyes widened in delighted surprise as he looked out over the water and increased the throttle. More and more seabirds came into view.
As the coastline drew closer, he could clearly see countless patches of white foam churning on the distant water, barely within reach of