Chapter 360: Chapter 221: Strength Earns Respect
If the first match was like everyone crossing the river by feeling for stones, then by the second match, everyone had at least a preliminary understanding of the fish situation and officially entered a battle-ready state.
Anyone who agreed to join the fishing competition, regardless of their actual strength, would not think they were bound to lose. At the very least, they felt they had some chance; otherwise, rushing to give money to others would just be foolish.
In the first match, Zhang Yang successfully took the champion title with a crisp and clear floating fishing method, pocketing half the prize money, which stirred up a lot of people.
Given these realities, before the second match even began, many anglers made tactical adjustments and entertained the idea of winning prize money through floating fishing.
In contrast, Zhang Yang and his team were more rational.
Especially Zhang Yang, who had already basically set his ideas before the second match began.
Continuing with floating fishing wouldn’t break through; choosing fixed-layer fishing was a more reasonable option.
It was a strategy that could switch between offense and defense and could be further adjusted based on the actual situation during fishing.
For the second match’s draw, Zhang Yang got number seven. The anglers on both his left and right were unfamiliar faces, adhering to the norm.
In contrast, Liu Zi had a stroke of luck and drew number one, positioned at the southeastern edge, commonly known among anglers as the "great edge."
Liu Zi remembered Zhang Yang’s post-match summary and, after confirming he had the great edge, also chose the floating fishing method.
Soon, after entering the arena, Ding Wen called out, and the second match began!
The crowd was eager to fish through floating, and the second match began with a tense atmosphere. Everyone started quickly casting at high frequency, maintaining a constant flow of bait for the first ten minutes without really aiming for a bite.
Meanwhile, Zhang Yang remained rational. After about ten test casts, he locked in his fishing layer to about forty centimeters from the bottom.
He began to implement the strategy of fixed-layer fishing.
At this point, some people might still be confused. What is fixed-layer fishing anyway? What does it specifically mean?
It was briefly mentioned earlier, and here is a repeated supplement,
The so-called fixed-layer fishing means choosing a relatively fixed depth to continuously lure and gather fish for a bite through a tactical thought process.
Compared to normal bottom fishing, fixed-layer fishing has certain advantages.
First, the time taken for the fishing rig to fall into position is somewhat reduced,
Second, finding a depth range where fish activity is more frequent can also increase the chances of getting a bite.
Last but not least, the depth in fixed-layer fishing can be conveniently adjusted based on the actual fish conditions during the battle, offering good flexibility.
And the specific operation?
It’s actually quite simple. Based on the original bottom-finding, Zhang Yang pulled the bobber down forty centimeters,
and threw groundbait normally, each time ensuring that the bait underwater focused on scattering and atomizing at a relatively fixed layer to gather fish when the bobber flipped to the preset fishing point.
This fishing strategy makes the casting frequency slightly slower than immediately lifting the rod after the bobber enters the water in floating fishing, but Zhang Yang does not mind.
His counter-strategy was to add more large-weight flakes and some Lubricating Powder to the bait, adjusting the lure into larger ball states directly.
With bigger individual bait balls, although the entering water frequency slightly decreased, the total amount of bait entering the water remained guaranteed.
As for the impact on the state of the bait ball, after initially attracting fish and building the nest, further adjustments were possible through baiting techniques.
Reality proved that Zhang Yang’s strategy was the optimal choice given the current fish conditions.
After about ten minutes of frequent casting at the forty-centimeter depth from the bottom, fish bites became increasingly frequent.
Zhang Yang scanned the other anglers and noticed no one else had started catching fish yet; he was the first to make two middling-sized bait balls and began catching fish on the bites.
This level of fish gathering was naturally not as frenzied as the floating fishing of the last match, so catching a single fish at a time was common.
Zhang Yang was aware and did not mind this early-stage gap, steadily and surely making each catch, reeling the fish in his swim into his fish net.
In this aggressive, high-strung environment, Zhang Yang’s performance was completely out of sync with the surrounding anglers. Leisurely catching one fish after another, he quickly got over twenty small crucian carp in his net.
In contrast, the competitive anglers at the same time largely kept their heads down, still floating fishing at the same frequency, without seriously aiming for bites.
Time rolled forward, and before long, it reached the twenty-five-minute mark.
Through continuous pitching, Zhang Yang already had thirty-seven fish in his net,
and as he continually pitched and built nests, the fish layer’s height also rose about ten centimeters. Currently, the biting depth was around fifty centimeters from the bottom.
This scenario was within Zhang Yang’s plans. He glanced at the time and decisively pulled the bobber down further, fishing at fifty centimeters from the bottom.
While pushing the float seat, he also made a minor adjustment: Zhang Yang quietly swapped for a smaller same-model bobber, but did not change the weight lead wire.
In the same float model, different sizes have a clear difference in lead capacity. The original size three bobber, when changed to size two, took less lead capacity.
With no change to the lead sheet on the fishing rig, the result was that the buoyancy of the size two float was unbalanced, and it would be pulled down by the lead wire upon entering the water.
This was no operational error; Zhang Yang wanted this effect.