Fishing

Getting a fishing rod

1. Buy the Fishing Rod from Mel for 200 Gold Petals. Mel runs Mel and Lusina’s Shell on the beach south of Wisk and stands outside all day: talk and choose Open Shop. If Mel is away on an errand, Lusina sells the same rod.
2. The rod never stops being available: after “Mel’s Journey” the sisters leave Glimmerwick, but a pair of mermaids takes over the shop and keeps selling it.
3. Equip the rod from your inventory before fishing. On a boat it’s the only tool you can equip.

How to fish

1. Casting and hooking:
   1. With the rod equipped, walk up to a fishing spot — water with fish swimming in it. (Bubbles mean a diving spot, not fish.)
   2. Aim at the fish: mouse cursor over the glowing patch, or the fishing cursor on the right stick.
   3. Cast with left click or A. A fish swims up to the float after a few seconds.
   4. Hook it when a ! appears over the line (left click or A). There’s no time limit — the fish waits for you.
2. You can’t cast with 16 mana or less (the bar shakes and buzzes), while swimming (stand on the shore, a pier, a bridge or your boat), or from a high ledge — get down to water level.
3. Reeling in. Once hooked, the fish’s song starts and notes slide towards a line on the staff: press left click or A as each note reaches it. Each species always plays the same song, so it gets easier with practice. B on a controller lets the fish go.

4. To land the fish you need more than 85% of the maximum score. That’s strict: all-Okay only reaches 80% and the fish gets away, so aim for Perfect on as many notes as you can. A miss costs you its 10 points and a 2-point penalty, and every extra press costs 2 as well.
5. Mana. Each fish costs 16 mana, paid only when you land it — if it escapes or you give up, you keep the mana and can cast again straight away. Fisherman’s Pie lowers the cost (below). The first catch of a new species plays a special tune.

When and where fish bite

1. Season and weather don’t matter — every fish can be caught all year, rain or shine. What matters is the kind of water and the time: day fish bite from when you wake up until 18:00, night fish from 18:00, and any time fish both. Night fishing is easy to fit in, since the clock stops at 22:00 until you go to bed.

2. On Freshman Pier, walk to the end and cast at the nearby fish; at the Shell, stand on the flat tide-pool rocks and cast beside them.
3. You can walk to the river, Wisk Pool and most coastal spots. The open sea and the Ochre Woods lake need a boat: Dee puts one up for sale for 2,500 Gold Petals in mid-Summer if you finished “Ferry Girl” — buy it at the ferry pier.

Every fish

1. Notes is the length of the fish’s song; Max misses is how many notes you can skip completely and still land it if every other note is Perfect (Okay and Sloppy notes eat into that margin too). Value is the sell price.

2. Songs worth knowing before you hook them:
   1. Jade Butterfly Fish: just 8 widely spaced notes — stay alert through the silences, one miss and it’s gone.
   2. Merman’s Folly: a fairly steady rhythm with two quick bursts of three notes. See them coming.
   3. Royal Trout: lots of fast runs; 33 notes and you can skip up to four.
   4. Sea Moth and Spectral Eel share the fastest song of all. Practise on Sea Moths by day to get ready for the night-time eel.

Catch odds

1. When you cast, the game picks from the fish available for that water and time. Common fish are more likely, but Fisherman’s Pie evens the odds out, and a second pie tips them towards rare fish. These are the chances of hooking each fish per cast:

Fisherman’s Pie

1. The Fisherman’s Pie is the only food that helps you fish: while it’s active rare fish bite more often and each catch costs less mana.
2. To make it:
   1. Drag Flour onto a Watering Can or Waterskin to make Dough (see Cooking for getting Flour).
   2. Drag the Dough onto a fish for an Uncooked Fisherman’s Pie. Any rod-caught fish works except Inky Puffer, Jelly Bell and Sea Moth (the Stony Spine doesn’t either). Cheap common fish like River Pixie or Brinebelly are the best filling.
   3. Bake it in a stove.
3. Eat it just before you cast. It lasts about 80 seconds (the timer pauses while a menu is open), and pies stack: each active pie cuts the catch cost by a fifth — from 16 to about 13 with one, about 10 with two — and five at once let you fish for free until the first wears off. It restores no mana, so eat something else if you’re running low.

Fish Trap Refrain

1. Fish Trap Refrain gives you a free catch every day. Mel teaches it during “Mel’s Journey”. Play it a short distance from any fishing spot and choose where to drop the trap (80 mana, 64 perfected).
2. From the next morning, interact with the trap to collect one catch — Jelly Bell, Prismatic Squid, Saltwater Harp, Spectral Eel or Stony Spine, each equally likely, whatever the water or time. That makes it the most reliable way to get a Spectral Eel (one in five) and the only way to get a Stony Spine. The trap disappears when you collect it, so play the song again for another.

Fishing skills

1. Start from Potionwork Proficiency (one of the starting hexagons), unlock Spirit of Flour next to it, and that opens Song of the Sea and Treasure Finder; Fishmonger sits next to Treasure Finder. All three take five points counting the two on the way.

Selling fish

1. Drop fish in the Magic Well to be paid overnight; every buyer pays the same. With Fishmonger the extra 20% shows up as Fishing Bonus in the daily summary.
2. Fishing doesn’t pay much — even the Spectral Eel only sells for 35, and each catch uses mana you could spend in the garden. Fish for the book and the pies, and treat the money as a bonus.

A Study in Fish

1. Florian, an elderly werewolf who runs the bookshop in Brick Alley, west of Wisk, wants to paint a fish. Helping with the book is the main reason to catch every species.
2. How it goes:
   1. Meet Florian outside the Brick Alley shop and hear about the fish painting — that starts the story.
   2. Come back another day: Florian asks you to bring every new species for the book (and points you to Mel and Lusina’s Shell if you have no rod).
   3. Put the fish in the chest Florian’s Fish inside the house. It only takes fish, one of each species; each new species fills one of its 15 slots. No duplicates.
   4. Collect rewards as you go.

3. Once the chest is full Florian keeps the fish and you can’t open it any more. A letter arrives the next morning: visit Florian for the Book of Fishes and the Published Author achievement.