Reincarnated as a Fisherman and a Dad Chapter 187
"This is nice. We can put the bacon and eggs in the bread and turn it into a sandwich."
The three men enjoyed a pleasant meal in the middle of the ocean while the boat bobbed gently against the waves.
Karlos glanced at his watch, about an hour had already passed.
"Let's go." Karlos and Brandon got ready.
"Huh? That quick?" Andres was surprised. Barely an hour had gone by, which was usually not enough time to catch anything. He had far more experience in fishing than Karlos and knew that longline fishing required hours to yield a proper catch.
"It's alright, just trust our captain." Brandon grinned at him.
"Let's pull up the anchor first."
The engine was shifted into neutral, and the boat slowly drifted toward the anchor line. The three men hauled the anchor up together until the job was done. After that, they navigated back to the spot where they had left the floater.
Once they retrieved the floater, Andres fed the rope onto the hand-cranked wheel and turned it slowly, recalling Old Man Kanor's instructions.
"Hm?" Andres was a bit surprised because the line felt heavy as he turned the wheel.
Manually turning the wheel was tiring, but it was still a much better method than directly pulling the rope, which consumed far more energy.
As the wheel turned, the first hook surfaced. A huge fish was dangling weakly, exhausted from trying to escape. Yet its size made the three men put safety first.
"...This is an albacore tuna." Andres did not expect their very first catch to be a tuna.
Albacore tuna had an average length of 0.8 to 1 meter, with the largest ones reaching up to 1.4 meters.
The one they had caught was about 1 meter long.
Brandon used a gaff(stick with a hook) to secure the tuna. Once the fish was safely aboard the boat, Brandon detached the clip, making it much easier for Andres to keep turning the wheel.
"...These clips are a lifesaver," Brandon said.
Hauling the longline was strenuous work, so the three men took turns operating the wheel to rest their muscles.
They caught barracuda, albacore tuna, grouper, blue marlin, and other massive fish... Andres was completely stunned. Most of the hooks had caught fish, and they were all remarkably large.
"We caught this many fish in just an hour of waiting? This is..." Andres was left speechless as he watched Karlos and Brandon keep moving systematically.
One by one, their hull filled up with large fish, to the point the boat was 2/3 sinking in the water.
"Alright, it's my turn to use the hand-crank." Karlos stood up, noting that only 20 hooks remained in the water.
"Oh, a yellowfin tuna. Nice."
"A bigeye tuna, not bad."
"A mahi-mahi, now we're cooking."
Andres couldn't believe it, he felt as though he had stepped into another world. Fishing shouldn't be this easy.
'Did something change during the time I stopped being a fisherman?' He asked himself.
"Guys, I need help," Karlos grunted, straining as he turned the wheel. "This is the last one, and it seems to be huge!"
Brandon readied his gaff, prepared to pull the massive fish in.
When the fish finally surfaced, all three men were shocked.
"A bluefin tuna!"
"It's freaking huge!"
The tuna fought back fiercely, splashing water everywhere. Bluefin tuna were the largest species of tuna and could easily damage a boat with their sheer size alone. The bangka trembled as the giant struggled against the line.
Andres grabbed a wooden club and struck the tuna's head to stun it. Brandon used that moment to haul the fish upward, but it was far too heavy for one person. Andres and Karlos quickly pitched in, using every ounce of their collective strength to lift it onto the deck.
"...We hit the jackpot, haha!"
Looking at the gigantic fish, Andres celebrated while the others smiled broadly.
"We've caught around 67 big fish."
"Yeah, phew. Let's take a few minutes to rest. We've been pulling this longline for at least three hours." Karlos sat down to catch his breath, but the boat had no space to sat around as fish was everywhere.
Catching a single large fish was a time-consuming process because of their weight. Manually hauling them aboard drained their energy rapidly. If their boat were fully mechanized, it would be a completely different story.
However, despite being exhausted, all three of them were incredibly happy.
"This bluefin tuna is almost 2 meters long. This size alone is a real eye-catcher."
"Can we sell it for a million pesos?" Brandon asked.
"Probably not... The best price would be around 300,000 pesos." Having worked as a porter at the fish port for many years, Andres knew the market prices of almost every species. Their local fish port rarely saw foreign buyers who would purchase a bluefin tuna for an exorbitant premium.
Besides, 300,000 pesos was still a massive sum of money. Andres would wholeheartedly accept that price.
"It all depends on the quality and the exact size of the bluefin."
"Let's measure it just to be sure."
If a bluefin tuna was smaller than 1.2 meters, it was illegal to harvest... Karlos measured the specimen and confirmed that it was actually 2.3 meters long.
He looked around his boat and saw that it was packed with large fish. This was only their first voyage using the mid-sized bangka, yet they had already managed to fill the entire hull.
"Our boat can carry up to 4.5 tons of weight. I think we are nearing 4 tons with our current catch."
"Yeah, we need to travel carefully if we want to make it back," Brandon joked.
"Don't jinx it," Andres reprimanded him, prompting Brandon to immediately slap his own mouth.
"Alright, let's balance our load first."
The three undertook another heavy lifting task, which proved to be exhausting. For their vessel to sail safely, they needed to distribute the weight evenly across the deck.
"...I think we should only deploy 70 hooks tomorrow."
"Yeah, I think so too."
Fortunately, they reached the fish port safely. They quickly sold off the fish that didn't require rigorous grading. However, for the large tuna that could potentially qualify as premium sashimi and sushi grade, they had to transport them to the dedicated tuna section of the port for buyer inspection. They had 15 sushi-grade tuna in total.
The rest of their catch was diverse but consistently large. Some wholesale buyers were exclusively interested in the tuna, while others were eager to purchase the mahi-mahi, grouper, barracuda, and remaining species.
The entire process took them two hours. Once only two tuna were left, they decided to take them home to share among their families.
"D-Did we really sell everything for 1.2 million pesos!?" Andres stammered.
[Thank you for reading this novel.]