The Black Striped Carp isn't much to look at; the workmanship and quality are fine. What Zhang Yang really looks forward to is the other three material combat rods.
Zhang Yang first pulled out the thinnest 3.6 meters one, removed the rod stopper to check the tip diameter, and then shook it in his hand to get a preliminary understanding of the rod's action!
By the standard of pit rods from his past life, the overall hardness is about 8H, feels solid in hand, and when pressed against the ceiling of the room, the rod's backbone is also quite impressive!
The wrapping outside the material rod is done at narrow intervals, and the bottoms of each section are polished very smoothly. For less than two hundred per rod, in Zhang Yang's view, aside from the lack of paint, the craftsmanship is already passable!
After checking the 3.6 meter one, next up is the 4.5 meter and 5.4 meter ones. The feel of the 5.4 meter rod is much poorer; with high hardness comes heavier weight, which has both pros and cons that Zhang Yang can accept.
That night, Zhang Yang plans to break in the new rods, so he took a ten-yuan dragon bone grip tape from the counter, wrapped the new handle, and put it into the rod bag.
With the rod issue resolved, the next task was to prepare the bait for the evening.
Zhang Yang unpacked a set of imported Marukyu's Four Kings fish bait and mixed them into a highly universal Marukyu composite bait using the ratio of four parts Carp Flag, three parts Peerless, two parts Three-Color Carp, and one part Waste Feed.
After preparing the Marukyu composite bait, he mixed it with 30% Marukyu composite bait, 15% Super Attractant, 10% Snowflake Powder Light Gluten, and 45% Tongwei granule powder into a standard mature formula bait for farmed carp fishing.
This carp formula bait is heavily loaded with granule powder and super attractant, making it much cheaper than pure imported bait but retaining the main core components of imported bait, ensuring a very stable fish-luring effect.
Zhang Yang is certain that under most regular pit fishing conditions, before the Yellowface appears, this carp composite bait is an unbeatable universal presence.
At the same time, this is also the main product bait Zhang Yang plans to promote in the next stage at his store.
With the store not busy, Zhang Yang prepared dozens of pounds of the formula bait, divided it into one-pound packs in kraft paper resealable bags, sealed them using a sealing machine, and branded them with the Ming Yang special supply label to finalize the process.
He placed the packed baits on the shelf, grabbed four bags to throw into the tackle box, and with everything ready, only waited for evening to release the fish and begin fishing.
According to the fishing ground's fish release announcement, fish would be released at 5:30 PM, and baiting would start at 6:20 PM, but just after 3 PM, Old Zhao drove to Zhang Yang's store.
"It's already past three, it's getting late, let's pack up and go? Better get there early to secure a spot; Wang Jun should be there!" urged Old Zhao.
Hearing about securing spots, Zhang Yang suddenly realized! Yeah! Damn, he nearly forgot about that!
In his past life, the pits Zhang Yang fished at were quite standard, and there was no securing of spots, it was all by lottery draw! Luckily Old Zhao came over early!
"Alright! Wait while I get the gear!"
Zhang Yang swiftly carried the fishing gear out of the house and loaded it onto the car, then locked the store door, and the two drove off toward the Oil House Fishing Ground.
Originally thinking that going to hold a spot at around three for fishing starting after six would be no problem, Zhang Yang felt a chill run down his heart upon reaching the fishing ground!
There were six or seven cars parked on the open ground, and many people were already by the water preparing bait and adjusting floats.
The anglers, who had already familiarized themselves with the fishing ground in previous sessions, had arrived early, setting up their tackle boxes, fishing chairs, and rod stands and nearly occupying all the good spots on the south shore!
"Darn! We're late!" Old Zhao couldn't help but mutter.
Scanning the fishing ground, Zhang Yang remarked, "Well, late is late! There are lots of people on the south shore, let's go to the north shore and set up our own spots! The south shore isn't necessarily better than the north!"
Zhang Yang wasn't just comforting Old Zhao with his words.
At the last session of sneaky fishing, Zhang Yang roughly measured the water depth at various points on the north shore using Wang Jun's rod.
This pond runs east-west in a rectangular shape, with a gently sloping bottom resembling a wok, and there isn't a significant depth difference between the north and south shores.
Just that along the walkway on the south shore, spots are already made, cleaner, and fishing during the day with the back to the sun is less glaring for better float observation.
The Oil House Fishing Ground had only had three fish releases since opening, with overall catches being average and no reference for fish harvest; everyone's understanding of this fishing ground was on similar levels, not really knowing which is the best spot!
As the saying goes, long fish the waist, square fish the corners, Zhang Yang plans to secure a spot at this pond's middle waist, with north or south shores being irrelevant.
"Alright then, I'll follow your lead. I have a sapper's shovel in my car, we can make our own fishing spots if needed!" Old Zhao nodded and began unloading the gear.
Having parked the car and with equipment on their backs, they approached the water; Wang Jun, who arrived early, came over to help.
"Quite a crowd today, at least twenty people! I reserved two spots for you guys at the southwest corner, aren't you going over?"
Glancing at the direction Wang Jun pointed, Zhang Yang saw that the southwest corner was almost filled with tackle boxes, one for each spot.
"Too many people there, we'll stick to the north shore! Yesterday we still caught a lot on the north shore! We can switch spots later if needed; let's see how it goes first!"
"Well, if you don't go there, and the fish are biting well on your side, save me an adjacent spot! If there are no fish here, I'll move over!"
"No problem!"
Having decided on the seating arrangements, Zhang Yang and Old Zhao used the sapper's shovel to clear the weeds at the shoreline, making two fishing spots about three meters apart.
With the tackle box in place, Zhang Yang took out the fish bait and poured three pounds of formula bait into the bait mixing basin.
"Old Zhao, I can make bait for you using mine if you want?" Zhang Yang said while bending over to fetch water.
"No need, I still have some unused Waste Feed from a couple of days ago! We'll use our own first, we can talk about it if we run out later!"
Zhao Bingguang politely declined using Zhang Yang's bait out of habit.
"Alright, just come get some if you need it later!"
Not pressing further, Zhang Yang casually poured water from the basin into the dry bait basin based on intuition.
With fingers splayed, he mixed it thoroughly, maintaining a roughly 1:0.4 water-to-bait ratio.
After making the scatter bait, Zhang Yang took a handful and added extra light gluten and water to knead it into a soft and sticky bait with the texture similar to an earlobe.
A softball-sized portion of soft sticky bait and a large basin of scatter bait for attracting fish and creating a nest completed the night's bait preparations!
Having prepared the bait, the next step was float calibration; Zhang Yang quickly assessed the underwater topography around the fishing spots.
The water depth at the 3.6-meter rod position near the shore was about 1.2 meters, but reaching the regular fishing point at 5.4 meters, it became over 2.5 meters, indicating a fairly large slope on the bottom.
Testing revealed to Zhang Yang that between the 3 to 3.6-meter position, there was a relatively flat area at the bottom, like a mountain road built on a steep incline.
Currently, Zhang Yang is unaware that this "mountain road" will serve him well once fishing begins in the evening!