Use seashells to chase the specialty fish of Tri An lake bed
Sand goby is considered one of the specialty fish of Tri An lake bed. Being favored by nature helps this
DONG NAI – In the dry season, when the water in Tri An lake is low, it is also the time when hundreds of households make a living by catching sand goby to increase their income.
On the morning of the end of March, Mr. Nguyen Van Tin, 62 years old in Phu Cuong commune, Dinh Quan district put his net on a boat towards the Nom wharf area to start hunting sand goby. This is his job for nearly 20 years to earn an income and support a family of 5.
This fisherman said that the sand goby is available all year round, but is most abundant in the dry season, when the water in the lake bed is low, and the shallow sandy slopes emerge. At the peak of the goby season, Tri An Lake has nearly a hundred boats with nets to chase fish. Due to favorable natural characteristics, this fish species reproduces a lot, helping to stabilize the people’s economy.
The first destination chosen by Mr. Tin was a shallow shoal less than a meter of water, about 50 meters from the shore, below are sand and small pebbles. The net was fixed with two buoys plugged into the bottom about 30 m, then he used a long rope that was connected to thousands of scallops to surround a water area of about 500 m2.
According to Mr. Tin, the sand goby usually lives on the sandy bottom and small gravel areas, when hearing the noise from the seashell wire, the fish is afraid, so it will run in the direction of the pre-set net. However, the catcher had to dip into the lake bed to pull the seashell rope for 30 minutes to catch a wave. “This fish often follows the school, but it is very slow, so you have to be patient. On average, each time you pull the net, you will get 1-2 kg, fortunately catch more, but sometimes there are only a few,” he said.
500 m away, Mr. Hung, 37 years old, invested in a steam diving system specializing in catching goby in the middle of the lake with a depth of 2-4 m for higher productivity. After choosing a location, he stuck the net pole to the bottom and then released the seashell rope around an area of about 1,500 m2 and then shook the rope. About 10 minutes, before pulling the net, he dived to the bottom to pull the scallop line to start chasing fish into the net.
After about 5 minutes of diving, Mr. Hung emerged from the water and signaled to his friends to pull the net together, collecting about 2 kg of sand goby. Working from 6am to 12pm every day, the group earns about 40-50 kg of fish. “With the current price of 50,000 VND per kilogram, except for oil, each person can get a few hundred thousand,” Hung said.
Adult sand goby is as big as the tip of a chopstick, their main food is small insects on the bottom of Tri An Lake. This is considered a clean and nutritious food because it has soft and sweet meat, which can be processed a lot of delicious dishes such as: braised tofu, braised with pepper, fried with fish sauce, fried with flour, cooked with sour soup…
With a water surface area of 32,000 hectares, Tri An Lake has long been famous for a variety of freshwater specialties such as sardines, leopards, snakeheads, sand gobys, giant freshwater prawns… According to Dong Cultural Nature Reserve. Deer, there are about 1,000 households fishing and aquaculture on the lake bed.
