Fishing story Chen

Black Fish in Chen's Fishing Literature

Every time I mention snakehead, I don't have a very good impression of it, and it always leaves a horrible and weird feeling, which may be related to many stories about snakehead I have read. In the stories I have read about snakehead, almost all of them describe it as a very cruel and mysterious fish, saying that it is treacherous and cunning and eats almost anything. Many kinds of fish, or other small animals and birds that fall into the water, may be its targets. Besides, snakehead is not only ugly, covered with dark scales, but also has a particularly ugly name. Northeasters call it "snakehead".

Snakehead is a kind of carnivorous and fierce fish that lives in the bottom of the water. As a child, it ate plankton, aquatic insects and shrimp. When it grew to more than a foot long, it began to prey on other fish. Usually, it likes to live in shallow water near the shore with many aquatic plants, wriggle slowly, swim slowly, or lurk in the aquatic plants, quietly wait for the opportunity, find the target, suddenly attack and chase the prey, and eat it alive without warning. In fact, not only snakeheads, but almost all carnivores have this cunning nature, even lions and tigers living on land. Otherwise, they can't catch their prey and survive. In the cruel natural competition, we can't get food, and finally we can only starve to death!

The snakehead is cylindrical, slender, with a cylindrical front and a flat back. It looks round and thick, like a stick soaked in water for a long time. I'm afraid that's why they are called snakehead sticks. The head of snakehead is sharp and flat, and the skull top, gills and gill cover are covered with scales. Besides breathing through gills, snakehead has a broad suprabranchial cavity above its pharynx, which is also its auxiliary respiratory organ. It can directly use the oxygen in the air without water, which other fish living in Heilongjiang waters do not have. In oxygen-deficient bubbles, or in a pond, it can stick its head out of the water from time to time and breathe with the help of an auxiliary respirator in the suprabranchial cavity. This strange way of breathing is also the main reason why it can survive no matter how bad the water is. Even without water, the black domain can survive for a long time. It can be said that among all the fish in Heilongjiang, except snakehead, no fish has this ability. All creatures in nature must have the skills and means to survive in the process of evolution, otherwise they will be eliminated by nature! This is a typical example of this evolution.

The dorsal fin and anal fin of snakehead are very long, almost connected with the caudal fin. The caudal fin is round and dark, with many irregular black spots on the body, two vertical and horizontal black stripes on the head, and black and white stripes on the dorsal fin, gluteal fin and caudal fin. The pectoral fin and ventral fin are pale yellow, and there is a black spot at the base of pectoral fin, which can reach more than 70 cm long. Snakehead likes to live in water with overgrown grass. In winter, it often gets into the mud of the river and stops eating for the winter. When I was working on a farm, I often heard fishermen's friends talk about the "moving" of snakehead.

Li Qinde is located in the lower reaches of Heilongjiang, which used to be almost a swamp and was once the largest wetland in Asia. Only in the 1970s, in order to get more food, people dug an artificial river (Beilahong River) in the middle of the swamp, which ran through Heilongjiang and Wusuli rivers and drained all the water in the wetland. This largest wetland has almost completely disappeared from the earth. Before the flood discharge river was dug, Sanjiang Plain was a huge wetland, full of winding underground rivers and countless bubbles, in which all kinds of fish lived, and of course there were many snakeheads. When I was a teacher in a farm middle school, I heard about snakehead from fishermen's friends countless times. It not only roars like a cow, but also often moves in foggy or rainy days, migrating from the bubble where they live to another bubble.

I didn't believe such a story at first. I have lived near Heilongjiang for nearly 30 years and have never seen a fish move! Imagine how surprised it would be if a crucian carp, or several carp, walked clumsily on the road. Fisherman friends don't believe me when they see me, saying that snakehead is a lazy fish and lives in blisters. If there are enough other fish in the blisters for them to eat, they will not move easily. If it weren't for the drought, the water in the bubble would evaporate extremely, the water level in the bubble would drop rapidly, or the fish in the bubble would be eaten up by them, so it would not be easy to move. Even if the water in the bubbles dries up, they can get into the wet soil to survive the severe drought and wait for the rainy season. If there is fog during this period, or the rainy season comes early, the snakeheads who are very sensitive to water will leave their temporary shelters and migrate to another big bubble to live. I was surprised to hear my friend say so. I didn't expect a fish to have such a great skill!

The snakehead is sexually mature when it is two or three years old, and the number of pregnant eggs is between 14000-24000. Parent fish breed in the still water shoal with lush aquatic plants from May to July every year. Parent fish move in pairs in the spawning ground and sometimes jump out of the water. The male fish uses his mouth to build aquatic plants into a "fish nest" with a diameter of about 1 m. Before the quiet sunrise, the female fish first enters the fish nest, belly up, lying on her back, and her body slowly shakes to lay eggs; Then the male fish in the same way. After laying eggs, the male and female fish guard at the bottom of the nest to protect the eggs and prevent the enemy from invading. Two or three days later, the fish eggs hatch into fry and live in groups in the aquatic plants on the shore. The male fish is protected with the group, and the big fish will not leave the young fish until the young fish grows to four or five centimeters.

Black snakehead grows faster. In natural waters, it can grow to about half a catty in that year, the maximum individual length can reach more than 70 cm, and the weight can reach 10 kg. It is said that snakehead is a very cruel fish. It preys not only on other fish, but also on its own eggs. So why does it have the heart to eat its own eggs? Speaking of which, there is another sad story!

Legend has it that snakehead originally lived in the sea. It is petite and gentle, and it is a very beautiful fish. There are so many suitors that even sea snakes have taken a fancy to them. One day, snakehead swam to a rock to rest. Then the sea snake swam over, wrapped it tightly and forced it to get married. The snakehead struggled desperately, but still failed to get rid of the entanglement of sea snakes. Soon, the snakehead found himself pregnant and pregnant with a sea snake's child, which made him very upset. In order to avoid sea snakes completely, snakehead left the sea and swam into a river. There are abundant aquatic plants and calm waters here, and there are also many crucian carp, silver carp, grass carp and herring. Those fish like it very much, too, and arrange for snakehead to stay in the river.

When he came to a new place, snakehead lived a happy and peaceful life. In this quiet life, its belly is getting bigger every day, and it will be born soon. The snakehead was afraid of giving birth to the evil seeds of sea snakes, and it told the grass carp about it. Grass carp couldn't make up his mind for a moment, so he took it to see the well-informed turtle. The old tortoise said, "Only one of the fish eggs you laid belongs to a sea snake. When I grow up, I will become a snakehead and swallow all the fish and shrimp in the river. " Hearing this, the snakehead became more anxious. He asked the old tortoise what to do. The old turtle told it, "This egg can't be seen from the surface, but it tastes different from other fish eggs." . Real fish eggs are bitter, and only sea snake eggs are sweet. When you lay eggs, you have tasted them one by one. As long as you eat sweet eggs, the rest are fish eggs. "The snakehead remembered the old turtle's words. When laying eggs, he swallowed the eggs one by one until he found the sweet egg and swallowed it. Since then, snakehead has had the habit of eating its own fish eggs, which has been passed down from generation to generation until today. But because snakehead ate snake eggs and grew black scales, it became ugly and was no longer liked by any animals.

People who used to live in the lower reaches of Heilongjiang, whether fishermen or not, rarely ate snakehead. What else is there to say? Eating snakehead will lead to "old disease". In those years, people caught snakehead and fed it to pigs. In fact, people at that time were afraid to eat snakehead, and there was no real evidence. I guess it's mainly because I'm so ugly that I have a lot of guesses for no reason, so I dare to eat snakehead easily. As a result, rumors spread more and more, and no one ate them. At that time, not only no one ate snakehead, but also no one ate seven-star eel. I remember reading a book about fish in Heilongjiang, which mentioned the seven-star eel and said it was poisonous and could not be eaten. I had a different view of the book at that time. Every time I catch seven-star eels from the river, I feed them to ducks. As a result, the duck was not poisoned, but laid a lot of double yellow eggs. Can fish that can't even poison ducks poison people? Later, I heard that someone finally dared to taste the seven-star eel. People who have eaten that kind of fish say that the seven-star eel is the best fish in Heilongjiang, and no fish can catch up with it. Of course, this is another story. When I was working on the farm, no one had eaten the seven-star eel. Now that I have left the farm, I can't eat if I want. But hard-working people eat snakehead very early, which is directly related to the famine era of the last century.

At that time, each worker only supplied more than 20 kilograms of grain per month, and with a serious shortage of non-staple food, many people were starving. There is a carpenter in the fishing team named Huang, an old errand boy from Guangxi. He lives alone and can't arrange meals reasonably. He has eaten all the food for more than half a month, and the rest half a month can only rely on picking up the fish heads and leaves thrown away by the staff canteen and cooking them back to satisfy his hunger. This incident was discovered by a Hezhe fisherman, who advised him that the snakehead bubble more than 20 miles east of the village would definitely catch snakehead there.

The snakehead bubble is a big bubble in Fiona Fang for more than ten miles, where there are many fish. Although no one ate snakehead at that time, Lao Huang decided to give it a try in order to survive. But Lao Huang has no fishing net and can't fish. Even if there are more snakeheads in the bubble, he can't catch them! Hezhe fishermen advised him to lay an ice eye when you get to the snakehead bubble, and then raise a bonfire next to the ice eye when it gets dark. The snakehead will jump on the ice when it sees light. You can take the snakehead jumping on the ice home to eat! Lao Huang went to soak snakehead with a grain of salt. According to the method given to him by Hezhe fishermen, he first opened a hole in the ice with an ice shovel, then lit a bonfire next to the ice eye, and then quietly waited for the snakehead to jump up. Not to mention, after waiting for less than half an hour, two big snakeheads really jumped up from the ice hole, and the biggest one weighed more than ten kilograms. The villagers heard that Lao Huang caught the big snakehead by soaking in fire, and they all followed suit. Every night, many people go to the ice cave where snakehead is located to soak, and then light piles of bonfires to lure snakehead to jump on the ice. After my family moved to Lichinder Farm, I heard many students talk about it. People living on farms have a unique godsend. It is with snakehead that they survived the famine.

Decades have passed, and now there are almost no snakeheads in the lower reaches of Heilongjiang. The snakehead bubble is just a place name, where you can't catch snakehead. At that time, snakehead gave his life and jumped on the ice to save the hungry people. Today, human beings almost lost their children in just a few decades just to get back some "paper" (banknotes). If there is another famine in the world, even if all the bonfires in the corner where the snakehead is soaked are burned, will there still be snakehead jumping out of the ice cave?