The Top Fishing Master
Chapter 175 - 137: Strange Events at the Fish Pond

Chapter 175: Chapter 137: Strange Events at the Fish Pond

After returning home, Yue’er was still at his house and hadn’t left yet; Lin Yang gave her a Big Flower Head to take home.

The remaining Big Flower Head was handed over to his mom.

While his mom was handling the big fish in the yard, Lin Yang also visited the two "small workshops" on the first floor.

Honestly, the space was still too small. Many things had no place to be stored; both rooms were packed full, and even the dining hall, where they usually ate, was filled with lots of things related to rice wine by the old couple.

Lin Yang felt that he could no longer drag this out.

Although he had only occasionally live-streamed during this period and hadn’t specifically promoted his rice wine, its sales were still steadily increasing.

He estimated that it wouldn’t be long before the simple workshop could no longer handle the load.

Now, Lin Yang had two ideas: one was to rent a factory in the city, then move the machines there, and hire two more people to start production. This would be simple and easy, but the downside was that it was far from home and difficult to manage.

The other idea, which had only occurred to Lin Yang recently, was to build another building next to his house and use it directly as a factory.

With fewer and fewer people staying in the village now, there was increasingly more vacant land. Many neighboring fields had already been abandoned, and buying a plot to build a house on it wouldn’t cost much.

Some time ago, Lin Yang also faced financial constraints, so he didn’t rush to expand the scale of the factory. But now that he had visited Suzhou recently, he had secured a large sum of money, and he believed it was time to get to work.

To construct a two-story factory building, the cost of the land and the building would be enough at three to four hundred thousand yuan; after all, since it was only to be used as a factory, a simple decoration would suffice. The main expense was still the price of the land.

In recent times, Lin Yang’s earnings from selling rice wine, various bonuses, and selling fish had already exceeded one million yuan in savings.

So, if funding wasn’t an issue, as soon as he made up his mind to build, it could be done quickly.

....

Late in the afternoon, Old Lin came back carrying a hoe; he had been busy with the village folks dealing with the fish pond these past few days.

But today, when he came back, his face clearly showed some displeasure.

His mom noticed something was off and asked him, "Why the long face? What, did you get into a fight? And didn’t you say you’d bring a fish home this afternoon?"

Putting down the hoe, Old Lin sat down on a chair, lit a cigarette, and exhaled, "Ah, don’t mention it. It’s all because of the fish matter. A few groups in the village almost came to blows!"

"What exactly happened?" Hearing that it seemed quite serious, Lin Yang and his mom gathered around.

Old Lin continued, "Initially, the plan from a few days ago was great, with everyone agreeing to clean the fish pond, then collectively enter into a contract to farm it. After selling the fish, the money would be split among everyone.... But after cleaning for several days, we saw a strange thing; for such a big fish pond, why were there so few fish? Even if people had been electrofishing frequently, it shouldn’t have depleted the stock completely...."

Hearing this, his mom, puzzled, asked another question, "No fish in the pond, so why would there be a fight?"

Old Lin exhaled another puff of smoke, glanced at her, and said, "No fish in the pond means the pond isn’t suitable for breeding fish. Now, having spent so much effort cleaning it up for collective breeding, considering the current situation, many people started backing out and stating they didn’t want to proceed. But the village chief insisted on pursuing it, leading to disagreement, and naturally, they were about to fight...."

Hearing his dad’s description, Lin Yang finally understood what was going on.

Firstly, regardless of whether the pond had fish, the idea of collective breeding felt a bit unreliable from the start.

What era were they in to still be doing things on a collective basis? No wonder the village chief, this old antique, came up with the idea.

With the fish pond not even beginning formal operation yet, it had already caused such a significant dispute; if they were to actually start breeding fish together, who knew what bigger problems might arise.

Additionally, there was one thing Lin Yang found quite strange.

The pond in their village covered an area of over a hundred mu, which roughly equated to about ten football fields.

As far as he knew, the pond was constructed in the 1970s and 80s, initially made for water storage to irrigate the fields, and gradually people started to lease it for fish farming.

And the water in the pond never dried up, being so large that when fish were harvested by previous tenants, only half the water would be let out, and fish would be corralled using nets.

Lin Yang still remembered that each time the family cleaned the pond, they would pick up small fish in the downstream creek to bring home; even large fish could be found on lucky days.

However, he hadn’t expected that now, after four or five years with the pond left unmanaged, it apparently had no fish, which was slightly eerie.

Seeing Old Lin still troubled, Lin Yang directly said, "Dad, we definitely shouldn’t get involved in partnership farming. Either our family takes the contract alone, or we don’t get involved at all."

Old Lin understood this logic too, but since everyone was from the same village, when the village chief first approached them to discuss this, it was hard for him to refuse, so he agreed to join in.

Though Old Lin had thought about contracting the pond alone, Lin Zhiyuan had never farmed fish before, and taking on the pond alone was a huge undertaking; he doubted he could manage it alone, thus he hesitated.