After confirming it was the right buoy, Ye Yaohua pulled it up first, then hauled up the sinker stone line and began retrieving the line.
The other two watched from the side, curious what good catches he might pull up. After all, there had been a sardine run yesterday.
Ye Yaodong did not have particularly high hopes. Sardines were ready-made live bait, and those big fish could barely eat them fast enough.
He reckoned his hooks would only catch smaller fish that could not swallow sardines, but there was no telling. What if some fish were stupid?
"Is it heavy?" Ye Yaopeng asked as he watched him retrieve the line.
"No, it's easy to pull," Ye Yaohua said.
Ye Yaodong was not disappointed either. "Then it probably isn't very big."
Ye Yaohua kept hauling in the line, and the three brothers saw the fish emerge from the water.
"It's a Lalun."
Ye Yaopeng and Ye Yaohua were both rather pleased. Their very first fish was a Lalun fish, and it looked fairly big.
After removing the hook, Ye Yaohua hefted it in his hand and said with a smile, "Pretty good luck. It's three jin."
The Lalun fish had a spindle-shaped body, with a blue-black back and a silvery-white belly tinged with pale blue. Two parallel pale blue stripes ran lengthwise along its sides. It looked quite pretty.
Ye Yaodong was quite satisfied. He was not counting on big fish; any catch would do. Lalun fish was a premium sashimi ingredient, and this one was worth two or three yuan.
Watching, Ye Yaopeng began itching to try his hand. After Ye Yaohua pulled up another two black seabream weighing over a jin each, followed by three Tinggong fish of about a jin each, he could no longer hold back.
"Let