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Net-fishing on the sea off the Dinh Tan village (Photo: Thoi Dai)

Net-fishing is a battle

It was three in the morning. On the global navigation vehicle, while numbers indicating the longitude and latitude were getting bigger, the knots are getting smaller. As the boat came to a complete shutdown, Leo shouted “Prep the offerings. Each of you does your own tasks. We’re getting started in a minute”.Turned out that was the first net-fishing time of the journey, even though they’d set sail for 4 consecutive days amidst the sea.

Most of the fishermen whose livelihood depends on fishing are idealistic. For them, their safety and how big the batch of fish depends on Mrs. Cau. Before casting the net out into the ocean, the fishermen often pay tribute to Mrs. Cau to pray for a safe, fruitful catch. Cursing, toileting, littering are a no no during the net-fishing time.

At the head of the boat, Mr. Tam Hung and Thoi, each threw one water probe into the water to measure the water’s speed. Hung, whose has been living on net-fishing in the past 35 years, said “Flying fish follow the wave to prey on foods in the surface of the sea, some 4 meters under the water. Thus, we need to measure the water’s speed to be able to catch the biggest batch of fish”.

On the cabin, Captain Leo read the compass to determine the direction, then the water probe machine to decide the water’s depth and speed. Once done with the numbers, Leo let the boat run again, pull the two water probes up, and commanded “Let’s sail far today”.

The boat sped up at 6.5 knots, a group of 7 fishermen rushed to the right of the boat, starting to tie the buoys. Den and Trung, the two most experienced fishermen in the group, were in charge of casting the nets out to the sea, as this was the hardest step in the net-fishing things.

After 1 hour, 12km of net had been cast out, buyos stayed afloat on the sea, hugging in batches of flying fish.

The boat is filled with white flying fish (Photo: Thoi Dai)

“Measuring the water is the key to successful catching. If the water flow is high in the morning, we’d better go catch far off the shore as there are plentiful of fish milling the long distance looking for foods. If the water flow is medium in the afternoon, flying fish often just swim nearer ashore. You’d be struggling a lot if you don’t know this secret”, Leo explained.

“Sailing out to catch fish is like entering a battle, and each is a totally different one. There are many fishermen who’ve run out of all stocks food but could net meagerly and had to get back ashore. You can guess, it was a heavy loss”.

A boatful of flying fish

The fishermen crew dines on porridge every time they got small catches, with a belief that Mrs. Cau would give them a more fruitful catch the time after that. The pray, in fact, often works.

On the 9^th day in the sea, the fishermen pulled up only 157 fish, weighing near 30kg. However, in the afternoon, schools of white, sparkling flying fish were caught, everyone worked relentlessly as the flying fish were just so plentiful. After the 4^th netting, batches of white flying fish filled the boat, which was later stored in over 70 fish tanks.

“We have Mr. Cau to thank for. We got over 1 ton of flying fish this afternoon”, a fisherman said.

A net-fishing day of the fishermen started before dawn, with the “anchor exercise” and ended with dinner at 11 pm, got a sound sleep in the sea, and ready for the next day.

Net-fishing at night (Photo: Thoi Dai)

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