After the drawing of lots concluded, everyone quickly began entering the scene. Zhang Yang, carrying his fishing box, walked straight to the far west end, put down his gear, and commenced the final preparation.
Earlier, the position at the middle waist was briefly mentioned; actually, the big edge position is also one of the top-ranking good spots in the fishing ground.
The so-called big edge consists of the nearest four fishing spots along the right-angle edge of the rectangular fishing ground, which at Joyful Forest are spots numbered one, twenty-four, twenty-five, and forty-eight.
Next to these fishing spots is the edge of the pond. When fish roam to this area, it naturally creates a gathering effect.
To describe it a bit more vividly, the middle waist position is like a traffic hub, with a relatively higher "flow" of fish passing back and forth.
While the big edge position is akin to a resting station node, in the edge area, fish are prone to gather when swimming here.
In certain situations where the weather is bad or when the fish are somewhat inactive, not liking to move around, the fish tend to pile up at some corner and remain motionless.
Getting a big edge position through drawing saves Zhang Yang at least half the time for attracting fish, definitely a boon like adding wings to a tiger.
Just as the fishing box was nicely placed with marking lines, an angler came up behind him to greet.
"Hey, buddy, you're Zhang Yang, right? Would you really sell your big edge position? I drew spot 9, add some money to swap with you?"
Zhang Yang looked up and saw the greeter was a tall, slim guy, with a swallowtail hairstyle, big sideburns, and a mole on his face with a tuft of black hair.
Zhang Yang had seen him once at the Meng Village friendship match last time, but the two hadn't spoken and he didn't know the guy's name.
This person who stepped in to buy the fishing position was none other than Chen Xueqiang, the expert external assistance Lang Junfeng sought last time.
Zhang Yang shook his head: "Sorry, buddy, just joking with my friend, not selling the spot! Finally drew a big edge, gotta enjoy catching more fish myself!"
"Well, never mind! You carry on!" Seeing Zhang Yang was not inclined to sell the spot, Chen Xueqiang lingered away carrying his fishing box towards his position.
After several more minutes, Zhang Yang had completed his preparations.
The 35-caliber small net was placed on the fish keeper's mouth, the washbasin was set behind him, to the right was the spare exchange trace box, the food box filled with powder bomb.
Several minutes later, Liu Mazi stood at the entrance of the plank house and shouted to start fishing, and the fishing ground immediately bustled.
The longest rod allowed was 5.4 meters, yet less than half the people used long rods to start fishing.
Among Zhang Yang and the dozen others, it was consistently all short rods of 3.6 meters, after several months of fishing in the black pit, everyone had gradually discovered the advantages of catching fish early with short rods, due in part to Zhang Yang's promotion.
Zhang Yang too was using a 3.6-meter rod, having drawn a spot close to the big edge, if nothing unexpected occurred, Zhang Yang planned to use the 3.6-meter rod to fish throughout the day.
Hand-throwing bait remains the majority's first choice, yet Zhang Yang was relatively composed, single-handedly grabbing a handful of powder bombs, squeezing it to the lead piece, precisely slinging it near the nest spot.
However, before using the lead seat to make the nest, Zhang Yang noted a detail worth mentioning.
He didn't cast into the area directly in front of the fishing spot but rather made several air throws along the edge line.
Through air throwing, Zhang Yang determined the approximate angle of slope between the shore and the pit bottom, locating the junction between the slant edge and bottom edge.
The subsequent bait position with the lead piece fell near this junction.
This is also a nuanced detail Zhang Yang has summarized over many years of fishing, maximizing fish gathering speed and firmly positioning oneself at the fishing stand by wielding it well alone.
Speaking of choosing the nest placement, another point different from fishing carp is the quantity for making nests.
In ordinary carp venues, Zhang Yang topped with about three to five egg-sized piles, but for fishing crucian carp, Zhang Yang thoroughly deployed eight piles until the powder bomb in the food box ran out before ceasing.
The feeding capacity of farmed crucian carp in schools is exceedingly large and very sensitive to the scattering range at the bottom; making the nest slightly larger as much as possible is also key to a faster nest activation.
Zhang Yang carried out the opening nest preparation promptly and then became quite composed, maintaining a steady rhythm of not-too-fast or too-slow Triangle Cannon casting frequency, waiting for the nest to activate.
The fish dropped using a slide truly opened their mouths faster than single box weight-drop fish, barely five minutes into fishing, the aftermath of the hand-thrown nest bomb explosion hadn't fully dissipated yet, and someone already got a bite.
Zhang Yang wasn't anxious in the least, turning to observe the angler catching fish on the North shore.
At this time point, catching this seven or eight tael crucian carp, ordinary anglers were less involved, Zhang Yang considered their technical operation rather crude.
The rod was soft, the fish retrieving process post-bite was nearly identical to the carp, dragging close to the water surface to the net, then pinching the fish to unhook, which was very inefficient.
Besides, for this farmed crucian carp fishing, over half of the anglers used kneaded bait.
Although the technique of pulling bait has been promoted, ordinary anglers grip the status of pulling bait incorrectly, otherwise too hard to pull out, otherwise too soft, pulling out becomes unclustered like nasal mucus.
Therefore, many of the commercial crucian carp pulling baits on the market are used as kneaded bait.
Under these factors, ordinary anglers catch and retrieve fish much slower, even if the bites were fast, from hook ex-, bait, rod casting into water to unhooking fish and placing in the keeper, the whole process would be no less than a minute.
Whereas Zhang Yang here was far advanced.