My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 27 Lord Xuande, you can't just grab a counselor and steal him (new book, please vote, follow, and collect)

As the tide peaked, Zhuge Jin hurriedly had people put down the drift nets and gave instructions on a few technical details:
For example, this time we want to catch fish at low tide, so the barbs formed by the cracked bamboo should face north, which is also the direction of the upper reaches of the Han Canal.

Liu Bei and Sun Qian watched the excitement nearby. It took them a full hour to set up the nets. Some of the buoys that were unstable had to be fished out and weighted to ensure they would not be washed away.

After doing all this, it was already dark. But Zhuge Jin was not in a hurry to collect the nets, and ordered people to light torches on the shore for illumination.

Liu Bei was a little impatient and couldn't help asking, "Do we have to wait like this every day?"

"That's not necessary. This is an experiment. We need to be prepared for unexpected situations and make timely adjustments. After we get used to it, we can just cast the net twice a day during high and low tide."

Zhuge Jin explained while watching the sailors and guards operate.

As a result, several sailors were lazy and made mistakes. He immediately reprimanded them and made corrections: "I have told you so many times! To catch fish during high tide, you need to light torches upstream, and to catch fish during low tide, you need to light torches downstream! What are you lighting here?"

The reprimanded sailors were quite ashamed and quickly apologized: "We saw you and the lord standing here, and wanted to help light up..."

Liu Bei waved his hand and said, "No need to do that. Since you have given me instructions, I will follow your instructions. Let's go to a place downstream and wait and see."

Liu Bei demanded that Zhuge Jin's orders be carried out completely and unconditionally. If the torches could not be moved, then the people would just have to move over.

Seeing that Liu Bei didn't ask for the reason, Zhuge Jin felt a little disappointed. He had actually been prepared to explain the scientific principles.

The group walked downstream for a hundred steps or so before Zhuge Jin lost his temper and asked, "General, aren't you curious why I didn't allow torches to be set up on the upstream shore?"

Liu Bei: "What you are thinking about must be reasonable. I don't understand it, so I will just follow you. I will not be wrong. If you think this is simple and we laymen can understand it, you will naturally explain it."

Zhuge Jin couldn't help but be amused and sighed, "I admire you. General, you are a gentleman who does not use tools, and you trust people when you employ them. You are better than Wei Wenhou.

In fact, in the dark, fish also tend to be attracted to light, just like moths to flames. Lighting the fire on the back of the net will attract more fish.”

……

Everyone chatted about science, boasted and gossiped, and finally when the tide reached low late at night, Zhuge Jin ordered the nets to be cast.

Under the expectant gaze of Liu Bei and Sun Qian, a group of sailors and fishermen brought the bamboo nets filled with countless large and small fish ashore one by one. They were very careful in the process for fear of dropping the fish.

Sometimes the catch is so large that the entire net cannot be pulled, and the sailors have to jump down to take down the big fish hanging on the bamboo thorns and throw them into the fish basket.

When Liu Bei looked at the amount of the harvest, his expression changed from solemn to relieved, and finally to surprise.

"How could we get so many? And most of them are sea bass! Even Songjiang perch?"

Liu Bei and Sun Qian were both connoisseurs of fish. Just by looking at the catches from the previous few nets, they found that the proportion of sea bass was very high.

There is a scene in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms in which Zuo Ci throws a cup to tease Cao Cao. Cao Cao wants to eat Songjiang perch and asks Zuo Ci to conjure one. Cao Cao then says it is just an ordinary perch and that Zuo Ci hid it in advance as a trick.

In the end, Zuo Ci refuted the question by saying, “Everyone knows that all perch in the world have two gills, except for the perch in Songjiang, which has four gills.” And the fish he conjured up indeed had four gills, proving that his illusion was powerful.

This is of course a fiction, but it also shows that saltwater perch was very precious in the Han Dynasty. (Note: Fan Ye's "Book of the Later Han. Biography of Zuo Ci" also mentioned that "Cao Cao said at a banquet: "Today's grand gathering, the delicacies are all ready, but the Songjiang perch is missing." However, "Book of the Later Han" is an official history, and there is no detailed description of Zuo Ci's magic tricks)
Nowadays, most of the fish brought by the Guangling tide are from rivers and seas, and naturally there are also a large number of sea bass.

Liu Bei and Sun Qian saw this and couldn't help but look envious.

In particular, these sea bass grew naturally and were rarely caught, so they could grow to a large size. This is unlike the later aquaculture industry, which only raised them to two kilograms for profit efficiency.

Liu Bei picked up a giant sea bass weighing about 15 to 20 pounds, looked at it carefully, and was amazed:
"I've been eating fish for 30 years, and I've never seen anyone catch so many bass. Fishermen in places where bass are common only catch about 20% of their catch. Tzuyu, how did you manage to catch more than half of them?"

Zhuge Jin had never thought about this question. He was slightly stunned and unable to answer for a moment.

In his experience, perch is not a rare species.

In the past, the market generally sold it for only ten yuan per pound, and in order to make more money, the boss ladies often devalued sea bass and promoted bamboo fish.
They say "bass is a bottom-dwelling fish, has a strong earthy smell, is rich in heavy metal pollution, and is greasy..."

Thinking back to this, Zhuge Jin suddenly understood and explained: "I understand. Most people use floating nets to catch shallow floating fish. My method today is to scrape the river bottom. Bass like to sink to the bottom, so there will naturally be more..."

He wanted to mention the other shortcomings as well, but then he thought, there was no heavy metal pollution in the Han Dynasty, and the greasy fish belly was not a disadvantage. As for the earthy smell, it was good to have it to eat.

Moreover, the fact that sea bass has no small bones is considered a big advantage today. As late as the Song Dynasty, Fan Zhongyan wrote, "People traveling on the river only love the beauty of sea bass."

Unexpectedly, this method of mine not only allowed me to catch many times more fish, but also made the species of fish I caught become much more valuable.

After Sun Qian and Liu Bei understood, they could only sigh at the wonders of nature. After a lot of hard work, near midnight, the harvest was finally packed and counted and weighed.

Liu Bei was quite curious about the final number, but he knew that the bet with Zhuge Jin had definitely been passed. Just by visual estimation, he could tell that today's number was definitely more than 20,000 kilograms.

"My lord, it's been weighed. Tonight we caught 34,000 kilograms of fish, with an average of 160 to 170 kilograms per net. It saves effort to catch fish this way. We just need to lower and collect the nets on time during high and low tides." After Sun Qian finished reading the accounts, his tone of voice was filled with endless surprise when he reported.

Even though Liu Bei was mentally prepared, he still clenched his fists tightly and slammed his palms hard a few times when he heard the final number:
"We can catch hundreds of dan of fish every day! In a hundred days, that's tens of thousands of dan! By the end of winter, we can catch at least tens of thousands of dan of fish! This military ration gap is completely filled! Oh, Ziyu seemed to have said that we can catch two rounds of fish every day when the tide rises and falls, right? Doesn't that mean we have to multiply it by two?"

Zhuge Jin poured cold water on the situation at the right moment: "You can't calculate it that way. Today is the biggest tide day of the year, so the harvest will naturally be the best of the year. It is far from achievable on other days."

Liu Bei was still not giving up, and thought again: "Can we set up fishing grounds along the river and expand the fishing area?"

Zhuge Jin: "With multiple interceptions, the harvest from the later ones will not be that great. And this is taking advantage of the natural characteristics of the confluence of the Hang Canal with the Yangtze River and the Huai River. This is possible because of the favorable time and location.

The best we can do is build one in Yunchang and Huaiyin County. This way, the total output can be doubled, but that’s all. We’ll have to think of other ways in the future.”

Liu Bei then felt quite regretful. It seemed that he still had to farm. Fishing could not become the main source of food after all. He was overthinking it.

But being able to have twice as much as today was something he had never dared to imagine before.

And Zhuge Jin obviously did not use all the fishing techniques he knew.

First of all, he only had some ideas and needed to slowly practice and explore.

Secondly, the bamboo bottom drift net is the simplest one and has the highest requirements for geographical environment. Only Guangling and Huaiyin can maximize the benefits.

Even if other princes learned it, they did not have the geographical environment to put it into practice.

Other more complex technologies are more versatile and more expensive.

After all, other technologies may require soft fishing nets in the future, which will require a large amount of hemp fiber, occupying the raw materials of other textiles and increasing the cost.

It is different from today's huge square bamboo nets that sink to the bottom and are made entirely of split bamboo strips. There was so much bamboo that it was worthless, which meant there was no cost for raw materials.

Zhuge Jin felt that those complicated jobs that required raw material costs could be handed over to his second brother to summarize and explore after a while. It would be enough for him to just get through the current difficulties.

Anyway, the two bets he made with Liu Bei were both exceeded.

……

Because he worked too late, Liu Bei did not invite him for a midnight snack that night, and after work, they all went back home to rest.

But early the next morning, Liu Bei excitedly came to him to discuss matters, and had someone steam a plump sea bass with onions, ginger, rice wine, and other wine and meat.

Liu Bei must have spent the whole night thinking about how to use this good news, and probably didn't sleep well. So when they met, he asked:
"Sir, the shortage of military rations in our army has been basically solved. However, I think we should still promote the promotion of the winter mustard cultivation we deployed earlier - although we are not short of a few vegetables, we should not neglect small acts of kindness.

A while ago, I was thinking that Gongyou lacked some "miraculous signs" to convince the people that our promotion method was absolutely effective. Yesterday, the drift net fishing was so effective, so didn't this "miraculous" come to our door?

We can catch more bass in the next few days, and hide the details. When we finally harvest, we will allow the people to watch from a distance, and then we will sell bass to the people in a big way. In this way, the local rich will surely believe that we have a magical method to catch a large number of bass, and they will definitely trust the other methods we promote to encourage farming, right? "

When Zhuge Jin was found, he was still half asleep. When he heard that the plan was generally fine, he just responded with "Oh, yes, yes, yes".

Liu Bei was very excited to see that his idea was accepted by Zhuge Jin, a great strategist, and he felt that he was better than before.

He quickly proposed another plan: "Since the military rations have been basically solved and the war has been settled,

The most urgent thing for our army to do next is to negotiate with Lu Bu, try to reach a reconciliation, and redeem the families of the soldiers - does Ziyu have any tricks to teach me about this?"

Originally, Liu Bei couldn't take care of this because the other two important matters were more urgent than redeeming his family members.

Now that I have some free time, I have to deal with this matter immediately.
Otherwise, dozens of soldiers would flee every day and want to return home to find their families, which would be unbearable over time.

Zhuge Jin was speechless: Why did they pick on me, a counselor? Did I ever say I knew diplomacy? No?
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PS: Please vote for, collect, and follow my new book. Thank you.

(End of this chapter)