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With a net, you are guaranteed a catch, and when you go to pull out the bait and tackle from a small wooden chest, your uncle finally finds his voice and protests. You assure him that if there are so many fish there must also be something bigger that preys upon them. It is that which you intend come away with today; nothing less will do. Your uncle does not seem convinced, but you are invigorated by the success with the sail and feel that luck will carry over somehow to the lure.
You cast your line and wait and wait and wait. Three hours pass with no real bite, a few smaller nibbles, a few smaller fish that you throw back to the water. Then, just when you are about to call it quits, you feel a strong tug. It is a big one, maybe the biggest you have ever seen. The two eyes on one side of the head, dark brown at the top with a tall backfin, it is a halibut, a four-footer easy. It struggles mightily against the rod and you fear the the whole thing will snap in two or capsize the boat itself, but your quick-thinking uncle manages to take the rod from your hands and, leaving you to the more suitable task of keeping the boat steady, he reels it in, spending all the muscles of his body to the task.
At last the great fish is taken out of the water and snapped up with a net (which hardly covers its enormous bulk). It is five feet long and over a hundred pounds, perhaps the biggest thing that has been caught in the village in over ten years, certainly bigger than anything your father had ever caught. Your uncle sinks to the ground, wet, exhausted, but laughing.
When you return to the village with your catch, the other fishermen and their wives look on in envy and admiration. A few run forward to help you carry the thing to the market, but your uncle will have none of it. The two of you carry it together, feeling giddy at the prospect of a hundred silver pieces or more passing into your hands by end of day.
But your are surprised still further when the fishmonger (a prickly but honest man with whom your family has dealt with since your grandfather's time) suddenly slices the fish open to reveal a belly full of eggs. The roe is worth half as much as the fish itself (and more when it has been aged by the cellarer of the castle) and all told together comes to a whopping 177 silver pieces. Nearly two weeks wages, so much silver that the fishmonger cannot pay it all once and requests some time to make you whole.
You decide to:
>Oblige the request, seeing as you are in no urgent need; though the reeve is sure to get involved in anything involving debts
>Sell the fish, but keep the eggs and sell them yourself directly to the lord, to whom it is a great favorite, though it robs the fishmonger of his business
>Take your business around the corner to the wealthier peddlers whom you could never approach before and take from their silver
>Write-in
