Just after seven o’clock, a loudspeaker in the distance announced that the position cards could enter the venue!
Subsequently, the crowd waiting at the entrance dashed towards the floating bridge at full sprint speed. The rıghtful source is 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵·𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖·𝙣𝙚𝙩
Zhang Yang and his friends had all paid for their position cards, and they certainly didn’t want to be left behind. They joined the crowd, running forward with their fishing boxes on their backs.
They were all in their twenties or thirties, and for a moment, Zhang Yang felt a fleeting sense of rushing to the canteen during high school after class in a hundred-meter sprint.
Thanks to Zhang Yang’s regular exercise and excellent physical fitness, he sprinted with the fishing box on his back at quite a pace. Besides the few who entered the venue first, Zhang Yang ranked around fourth or fifth.
It was his first time here, and he didn’t know precisely which fishing spot was good or bad, but Zhang Yang didn’t lose his calm. While sprinting forward, he meticulously observed the ground conditions.
The few anglers at the front had already placed down their fishing boxes. Zhang Yang made a brief observation and noticed a small detail, feeling assured in his heart.
The occupied spots had either fish bait or fish scales on the ground, indicating the cleaning was not thorough. In contrast, the other spots were much cleaner.
The logic of this detail was simple; spots that catch fish daily always have someone sitting there, leaving traces whether they bait or retrieve the fish. With six or seven hundred fishing spots in the pit, it was impossible for the owner to clean utterly, leaving behind some marks inevitably.
Based on this judgment, Zhang Yang swiftly selected a fishing spot near the south side and placed his fishing box directly on it.
As soon as he put it down, he saw a dark-skinned young man wearing a tilted baseball cap rushing towards this direction. Upon seeing Zhang Yang occupying position 155, an expression of disappointment flashed across his face.
Hesitation leads to defeat. This brief moment of wasted time meant that when the young man tried to occupy other spots, he found that people behind him had already taken them.
The prized spots with a good fish haul were few, and now the remaining positions were just ordinary fishing spots, greatly diminishing the value of the position card.
The disappointed young man wandered around a bit longer without putting down his fishing box. Instead, he carried it to position 154 next to Zhang Yang and settled there.
Zhang Yang had noticed the young man intending to compete for the fishing spot with him earlier. Seeing him take a round and sit next to him, Zhang Yang grinned and nodded in friendly greeting to the young man.
The smiling nod from Zhang Yang was a gesture of goodwill, but to the young man, it seemed slightly schadenfreude.
"Damn it! Taking my master’s sweet spot, what’s there to laugh about!" the young man muttered some not-so-clean words under his breath.
Zhang Yang heard the young man’s disrespectful words but considered that his earlier actions to snatch the fishing spot and smiling nod might have been misunderstood. Therefore, he chose not to take issue with him.
The young man looked to be in his early twenties at most, just a slightly older child in Zhang Yang’s view, not worth getting serious over.
So, Zhang Yang ignored the young man, placed down his fishing box, and turned towards the shore, he still needed to make another trip to bring the other equipment over.
After Zhang Yang had returned with his gear, someone had filled the neighboring position too. A man, around thirty-five or thirty-six years old, sat on a fishing box, concentrating on adjusting his bait.
The young man who had tried to grab the spot now sat beside the man on a small stool, looking like an auxiliary fisherman.
Not impressed, Zhang Yang naturally ignored him, set down his gear, and began preparations before fishing.
The rules at the garden were strict; nothing was allowed in the water before fishing began, so after Zhang Yang completed his preparations, he idly waited.
The twenty minutes of early positioning time passed quickly as another loudspeaker blared, and the regular anglers began to pour in, creating another scene of chaos.
Ten minutes later, the loudspeaker called out, and the official fishing began!
In the next moment, nearly everyone began frenziedly throwing bait into the water around their targets.
Hand-casting bait is almost obsolete in W City’s pond fishing circle, but here, it remains standard practice.
When the fish are thick, if there’s a target, there’s fish, and hand-casting is the most efficient way to create a target area.
Zhang Yang also ceremoniously threw a few balls of bait, then began calibrating his bobber to start official fishing.
Having completed a series of bottom-finding operations, Zhang Yang cast a few rods around the fishing spot front, back, left, and right, and soon understood why this fishing spot was so coveted.
In the surrounding front-back-left-right area, the water was at least seven or eight centimeters deeper, except the fishing spot in front of Zhang Yang which was shallower by seven or eight centimeters, just the right depth for a full-length cast of three meters nine.
This small depth difference may not matter much in a low-density regular fishing pond, but in Jinghai Garden, where tens of tons of fish are released, it makes a significant difference.
Having figured out the general underwater terrain, Zhang Yang felt confident and immediately launched into action, using a lead cannon with two pieces of rubber band bait, bombarding the spot intensely.
Unlike regular fishing ponds with depths of one point seven to two meters, Jinghai Garden’s water level is much deeper. Zhang Yang’s bottom-finding measures around two point seven to two point eight meters, and even before catching fish, Zhang Yang realized his 8h rod might be too soft.
Sure enough, after a lead cannon with over ten bait balls, the bobber indicated a hit just before reaching the bottom. As Zhang Yang lifted his rod, a massive force surged from below the water.