Golden Fishing Village

After finishing his words, Tu Yichan changed his water back and took his fishing rod out.

Ao Muyang looked at the pond next to him and asked, "Grandpa, are you planning to catch fish and cook it?"

Tu Yichan smiled and said, "Yes, guess what fish it is?"

Ao Muyang shook his head, "I can't guess it, but making carp is a dish that tests the chef. Are you going to show off your skills in this regard?"

Tu Yichan straightened his back proudly, "Carp? Humph, this thing is well made, just add as much ingredients as you want, how can it show my skills?"

There is a small wooden bed next to the pond, painted on it, and it becomes a boat when it is turned over and thrown into the water, a very simple sampan.

Tu Yichan got on the boat and looked at Ao Muyang. Ao Muyang asked, "Is the water in your pond dirty? Is it polluted?"

The old man shook his head, "How can it be polluted? It's very clean. No one in the village dumps garbage here. At most, some old women come here to wash clothes."

Ao Muyang said, "That's good. If I go down, I will go directly into the water. You go fishing."

He didn't know what fish Tu Yichan wanted to catch, but the old man was not a fishing expert. He threw the fishing rod down and pulled it up several times, but didn't catch any fish.

As time passed, Tu Yichan felt a little embarrassed, so he turned around and said, "This fish is not ordinary. Only we can eat it here. Boss, you have to be patient and wait."

Ao Muyang looked at his phone and said, "I'm not in a hurry. You fish slowly."

Tu Yichan was so slow that he got tired. In the evening, the sky was full of red clouds, and night was about to fall.

Ao Muyang asked, "Grandpa, are you planning to go night fishing?"

The old man said angrily, "Today the bass is particularly cunning, usually it's easy to catch."

After hearing his words, Ao Muyang asked back, "Bass? Do you have river bass or largemouth bass?"

There are many kinds of fish that can be called bass in Chinese, among which the most common are four types: sea bass, scientifically known as Japanese true bass, distributed in the coastal waters and at the confluence of freshwater and seawater in estuaries.

There are three other freshwater bass, namely Songjiang bass, which is the most famous, but it used to be produced only in Shanghai, and some even say it was produced only under the Xiuye ​​Bridge in Songjiang.

Then there are largemouth bass and river bass. Largemouth bass is also called California bass, a new species introduced from the United States. River bass is also called red bass and five-way black bass, produced in the northern Xinjiang region.

These perch are not seen in the freshwater rivers and lakes of Hongyang. If there are introduced species, they should be largemouth black perch and river perch. Songjiang perch is too rare. After the 1970s, due to river changes and sluice blockages, this fish was almost extinct.

Later, around 2000, the Shanghai Fisheries Research Department sent 7 teams to search for them in coastal areas across the country. Finally, they found traces of this wild fish at the mouth of the Yalu River, and then carefully brought them back for artificial breeding.

Even artificially bred Songjiang perch is rare. It is impossible for it to appear in a pond in the mainland, because this fish is a coastal migratory fish. The young fish swim upstream from late April to early June, with the peak in May, and the adult fish go to the sea from November to February of the following year.

Every spring, the young fish swim from the Yangtze River estuary to the inland river to grow and fatten; in autumn, after sexual maturity, they swim to the junction of seawater and freshwater at the Yangtze River estuary to spawn and reproduce offspring, repeating the cycle.

But the old man gave him a piece of news that made him dumbfounded: "Neither, it's a four-gilled perch!"

Four-gilled perch is another name for Songjiang perch, because in "Xu Yunfu" it says "all perch in the world have two gills, but only the perch in Songjiang has four gills".

Ao Muyang said in surprise: "This is impossible. How can your pond support four-gilled perch? How do they reproduce? Can there be wild four-gilled perch here?"

The old man smiled and said: "It's not wild. Someone sent it to me. I worked in the guesthouse in Hongyang for many years. Later, it was not good for my reputation. The leader asked me to resign. I wrote "Thinking of water shield and perch" in my resignation letter. The guesthouse happened to get a few live four-gilled perch at that time, and then the leader gave them to me. I threw them into this lake after I went home."

The idiom "Thinking of water shield and perch" refers to an official named Zhang Han in Luoyang. This Zhang Han is a famous scholar in the Jin Dynasty, not the one on the screen today who shouts "It's not my fault that I'm handsome". Zhang Han was unsuccessful in politics, and seeing that the Central Plains was about to be in chaos, he pretended to miss the water shield and perch sashimi in his hometown when he saw the autumn wind, and resigned and returned home.

Listening to his words, Ao Muyang felt something was wrong: "How many perch? How many do you usually catch? Are there any left here?"

Four-gilled perch can survive in fresh water, but they can't reproduce.

Tu Yichan's words shocked him again: "I put a few in, but later I found that they reproduced. Really, I occasionally catch one or two, and I must have caught dozens of them."

"This is impossible." Ao Muyang shook his head repeatedly.

Tu Yichan smiled and said, "I also thought it was impossible, but later I found out that this pond is a magical pond. If you can go down, you will know that its upper and lower layers of water are fresh water and sea water respectively!"

Ao Muyang felt that the surprise he had this year was not as great as this afternoon. He was surprised again and asked, "Is this a double-layer lake?"

Tu Yichan shook his head: "What double-layer lake? Anyway, this pond is so magical. I only found out after raising this perch."

Ao Muyang explained to him: "The double-layer lake is a wonder of the world. There is a Newark Lake at Cape Barrow in northern Alaska, USA. The water there is divided into two layers, with a clear dividing line. The upper layer is fresh water, where freshwater fish live; the lower layer is slightly bitter salt water, where marine plants and animals live."

Tu Yichan said: "Oh, then this is it, but the pond is too small to be considered a lake, and there are no marine plants and animals. There are only four-gilled perch in it. I just happened to find it. No one in my village discovered this secret except me."

This is indeed a secret. Ao Muyang took off his clothes and jumped into the pond. Anyway, Tu Yichan had already said that the water quality of this pond is very clean.

Jumping into the water, he looked down.

Although this pond is not big, it is actually quite deep. The center of the pond is about ten meters deep, which is deeper than many wells in rural areas.

He looked into the water and found that the water quality was different. The upper water was clearer and the lower water was bluer. Compared with other ponds, it had a special feature, that is, there was no water grass at the bottom of the pond, but there were a lot of water grass growing around the edges of the pond.

Not only was there no water grass, but to be exact, there was no life at all in the lower layer of the pond. There might be some plankton, which could not be seen by the human eye. Anyway, there was nothing at the level that the human eye could see.

There were more fish in the upper water layer, but there were few species, just crucian carp, grass carp, loach, carp, and another fish with a more special appearance, which was the key point.