I loved fishing when I was a child.

Catch a fish called "cuckoo".

When I was a child, the sea pond did not use cement, and there were many stone caves near the foot of the mud.

After the tide recedes, the sea remains in the cave, and the cave with water all year round is the nest of the cuckoo.

The cuckoo eel is not an eel, it is a type of fish.

The shape is like a loach, but it is larger and fatter than the head of the mud feather, and it is a bit like a mud fish, but it is smoother and stronger than the mud cloth.

This cuckoo eel is the most valuable fish we have known since childhood. The meat is delicate, delicious, fat but not greasy, fresh but not fishy.

Drink a bowl of soup boiled with cuckoo eel, "the bones will also be lighter", and "the rice bed will also get up and run".

After the tide recedes, look for it along the foot of the pond, as long as there is a slightly larger hole with water, there will be very small cuckoos swimming, and there are often small stone crabs crawling.

It is said that cuckoo eels eat crabs.

But the big cuckoo eel is hidden deep in the hole, you can't see it, you can only use a fishing hook to catch it.

At a very young age, I learned to make fishing hooks with the needle that my mother used to sew clothes.

Take a medium-sized needle and bake it with a kerosene lamp, it will be very hot and the needle will become very soft.

Then the tip of the needle is folded over with scissors to become a fish hook.

When fishing for cuckoos, it will wait until the tide is high before it comes out to feed.

I'll calculate the time of high tide and get to the pond early.

Sometimes I put the fishing rod on the spot where I can see it, catch the crab for a while, pick up the snail for a while, and watch the tide come from a distance before preparing to fish for cuckoo eel.

First of all, you must find the entrance of the cave, and then grab a handful of sea mud and stick it more than 1 meter above the entrance of the cave, waiting for the tide to rise.

Generally, we will find 2 to 3 holes and catch a few small stone crabs as bait by the way.

Sometimes earthworms or cooked shrimp are also used as bait.

When the tide approached the hole, we put the hook into the hole early.

At this time, the most bait, the cuckoo eel actually heard the sound of the tide coming and waited at the entrance of the hole.

The tide rises very quickly, and sometimes it is too late to run.

As long as you slam the slightest movement to the right rear, you will be able to throw the cuckoo into the mud or grass on the pond.

At this point, you have to run over and hold it, otherwise it will get off hook.

Then change to bait and continue fishing at the mouth of the hole. Up to 10 fish can be caught in one hole.

3 Cuckoo eels with more than two taels of strength are very strong, and if they are not careful, they will pull the hook into the hole, and the line will be broken.

When the tide starts to go down, we stop fishing.

This rhododenum is very vigorous, we often use a rope to string it up and dry it on the ground for several hours, as if it will not move, and once it is put in the water, it will come back to life.

Knowing that the eel is very replenishing, he will always humbly ask his parents and eldest brothers and sisters who do manual work to eat meat and drink the rest of the soup by himself.

The soup was also delicious.

The main season for cuckoo fishing is in the summer, when the department is on vacation. There are also in winter, but it seems that fishing is rare.

Two years ago, my father was very weak and couldn't eat anything, so he said that he only wanted to eat cuckoo.

I went to several nearby farmers' markets but couldn't buy them, so I took a ferry to Daishan, where there were a lot of mud graffiti goods, and bought a few catties.

Watching my father eat with relish, I wondered, why didn't I catch more fish in the first place?