Fishing is one of Elaina’s past times even during the time when she was busy expanding the farm. She made sure to put in some time for fishing time and time again just to alleviate stress. Considering how it trains her patience when waiting for a bite, it is one of the things that made her keep her head clear as she can let her mind wander from time to time while also waiting for something to grab a bite on her fishing rod.
Not only that but thanks to the God of Fishing being also a patient god who does not pressure Elaina to achieve any kind of achievements, she can take her own pace in fishing. Over the past few years, she has steadily increased her fishing mastery like the other skills she have and although slow, has slowly accumulated over the years. According to the God of Fishing, it will only boost if she got new species of fishes to fish or if she captured a fish that she have not seen before.
Since Elaina cannot access the ocean since she has no boat to borrow and she doesn’t want to spend most of her time on the harbor to fish, she maintained her position in fishing either in the forest, her farm, or on the Mines where she can fish all day and not a single second will pass by. As a result of doing so, it didn’t take too long before she earned the chance to increase her mastery level and gain access to the recipe of making her own Crab pots and the ability to buy crab pots on the Catalogue.
Crab pots, as the name suggest has the capability to capture crabs and other small creatures if one puts a bait on the crab pot. Not only does crabs can be captured there, even mollusks and other shellfish can be gathered there too. Periwinkle, cockle, oyster, even a few small snails, and sometimes, shrimps if Elaina is lucky. But sometimes, there are times that she gets a bad catch with them. Not only does she got fishes, but she also gets trash. Rotten wood, seaweed that are not edible, or perhaps...rocks.
According to the God of Fishing, the crab pot she have is the lowest quality crab pot and the only way for the trash to be filtered is if she increased her mastery and she gained the recipe of Big Crab pot where she will gain the chance to catch lobsters. Lobsters are expensive when sold due to how rare they are and if it is big in size, they fetch a hefty amount as many chefs would scamper to buy it if one finds an available lobster in the market. That is how scarce catching one. Not only that but the Big Crab pot is also capable of rejecting trash and filtering it from being caught. The only downside on it is that she will no longer have a chance to grab an edible seaweed from it but it was a small price to pay as long as she can have less trash to deal with.
Now that Elaina has gotten a new recipe that needs Elaina to cook seafood, she decided to start fishing. Since it is too late to plant new seeds at fall since winter will soon arrive, Elaina has no more pressure on planting new crops on the field, well, aside from the Dungeon farm and the medicinal herbs which are not really that hard to maintain, she can focus on her task at hand and that is to either catch a lot of crab, or catch a large fish to cook the dish, Baked Fish.
One of the recipes that Elaina purchased from Marigold is the Crab Stew which is perfect for the upcoming winter due to how the dish is quite perfect for cold weather. Although it was also a good recipe to use for the upcoming banquet, Elaina has not yet decided if she will use it or not considering that the crab pots she have are not guaranteed to catch a crab and crab stews are quite heavy on crabs which is why she would rather use a surefire dish that she can cook without fear of not catching any good fish. Baked Fish does work on every big fish after all.
"It’s been a while since your last fishing attempts, Elaina. Does that mean you will be cooking fish again?" the Harvest Goddess popped out behind Elaina currently munching on some boiled sweet potatoes that Elaina cooked after the successful harvest.
"It’s almost winter. Fishes that only appear during winter is going to pop out of the waters pretty soon and considering how these fishes are big in size most of the time, it is the perfect fish I needed to make Baked Fish and practice how to make it. You can try it if you want once I am done cooking."
"Oh, I like that idea. With winter coming soon, I can finally take a break at my farming duties and I can finally laze about whenever I wanted.
"Haha, don’t be too lazy, Harvest Goddess. Alessa will be really pissed if you just laze about everyday during winter and you don’t want to get creamed by her."
"Ugh...don’t remind me, Elaina. Considering how she is still having those secret meeting with her husband nowadays, I can tell she is slowly shifting to her real behavior now instead of being meek and shy. Who would have thought that she would be so wild."
Elaina chuckled. "Don’t say that out loud, you will get busted by her and you will not be able to see the light of the day if you keep on telling that."
Hearing this, the Harvest Goddess gulped her saliva nervously. One thing she didn’t want to do is to piss off Alessa. She might be quiet at times but when she does get angry, she is not someone that she wanted to mess with.
"If Alessa is looking for me, tell her I am doing my goddess duties, alright? I will go inside the farmhouse and borrow your bedroom."
Elaina nodded. "Make sure to clean up after you are done there, alright? I don’t want the ants to come to my bed since you didn’t clean the scraps of food you dropped."
The Harvest Goddess gives her a thumbs up before scampering to Elaina’s room. Elaina on the other hand attaches the bait she needed to her fishing rod. She can see the water of the stream teeming with some big fishes that she is eyeing to catch for quite a while now. Now that she has no more distractions, it is time to start fishing.