Stardew Valley: 15 Essential Tips For Fishing - TheGamer

From foraging, farming to fishing, Stardew Valley has all the options a player could hope for from a relaxing game. While most of these activities are fairly simple to take care of, fishing has always been a notoriously difficult task due to its challenging mechanics.

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Particularly hard for those who are new to the game and who have yet to practice their fishing skills properly, it can get incredibly frustrating trying to catch even the easiest of fish or even dream of one day catching a legendary fish. Not to worry, though, because we're here to share tips to turn you from a newbie into a seasoned fisherman.

Updated October 6, 2024 by Jacqueline Zalace: Fishing can be quite a challenge, and we know that. As such, we've added a few more tips for you to keep in mind while fishing in Stardew Valley.

19 Start With Lake Fishing

At the beginning of your fishing journey, you may find it hard to catch a lot of fish. When still leveling up the skill, we highly recommend doing so in the mountain or forest lake. These lakes let you level up your fishing skills while still being able to catch the fish.

Once you level up and get a new rod (along with bait and tackle), you can branch off to other locations knowing that you have all the tools and skill necessary to catch the fish there.

18 Use Crab Pots

Once the player reaches level 3 in fishing, crab pots will be accessible in the crafting menu. These small pots can be placed in the water just about anywhere, and they'll yield resources the next day. Bug Meat can be turned into Bait, which then needs to be placed inside these Crab Pots. If the player has the Luremaster profession, adding bait isn't needed.

Crab pots are brilliant because they'll actually count towards the fishing skill when harvested, even if the player only gets trash from their pot. Each harvested pot grants 5 experience points. If the fishing mini-game is driving the player nuts, this is a superb way to increase the skill with minimal effort while making money.

17 Use Bait

There are seven types of bait in the game since 1.6, and each has its own use. If you're looking to catch a specific fish, craft the Bait Machine available at level 6 to create Targeted Baitout of any fish you have. If you're looking to remove the stresses of weather, time, and season, the Magic Bait allows you to disregard those and catch any fish from a source.

For the pros among you, we recommend Challenge Bait, which triples a perfect catch. Until then, we recommend favoring the Deluxe Bait, which causes fish to bite faster while increasing the size of the fishing bar, and can be created via the Deluxe Worm Bin, an upgrade to the standard Worm Bin.

16 Clear Your Inventory

If you really lock into your fishing time, it's easy to quickly fill up your inventory (especially if you don't have the best inventory upgrade yet). To avoid having to make the decision on what to throw away in your inventory, it's important to clear out your inventory before a fishing expedition.

We suggest putting non-essential items in a chest, which can then be retrieved later. If you plan on doing some hardcore fishing, you can even clear out other tools that you don't use while fishing, such as your watering can or pickaxe.

15 Go For Perfect Catch

A perfect catch might sound like a mission impossible, but after the 1.4 update, it's even more important to focus on it. The perfect catch is achieved when the green bar remains fully on the fish icon during the mini-game at all times. If the fish surpasses the bar, the player has lost their chance of a perfect catch, even if they still manage to catch the fish.

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Having a perfect catch after 1.4 actually bumps up the quality of the fish by one point. This means that a catch that would have ordinarily been silver will now be gold, and a gold catch will be iridium quality. Time to train that perfect catch method!

14 Get The Training Rod

There have been tons of complaints about how extremely difficult the fishing mini-game is, and while the game won't see any major changes introduced to it, there's good news for anyone who hates fishing. 1.14 introduced a brand-new fishing pole called the Training Rod, which is extremely cheap: 25 gold in Willy's shop.

Fishing with this rod is very easy compared to other rods and bumps up the player's fishing skill temporarily.

The rod is ideal for any newbies. However, keep in mind that only basic quality fish can be caught with the training rod. Moreover, only fish that have a difficulty level under 50 points can be caught. That being said, the amount of experience gained from using the training rod is still the same, which makes it incredibly efficient at leveling up the fishing skill fast for a better fishing experience.

13 Buy The Fish Pond

While the fish pond is more of a mid- to late-game farm building, it's a great addition for players who want to boost their fishing skill gains. The fishing pond was added in the 1.4 update, and it basically allows the player to populate one pond with one type of fish.

Any type of fish, with the exception of legendary fish, can be placed in the pond. The fish will then yield various resources over the next few days. Harvesting these resources will grant you fishing experience, as well as a nice variety of items depending on the kind of fish. It's a perfect way to get Roe reliably, especially with the update giving the ponds a chance to produce extra roe.

12 Understand The Mechanics

The biggest issue many players find themselves coming up against is a pure misunderstanding of how the fishing mini-game actually works. There are two ways to move the green bar to follow the fish icon that moves up and down: slow click and release, or continuous fast-paced clicking.

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The former will shoot up the bar high up quickly and allow you to catch up with the fast movement of the fish, and the latter maintains the bar at a set level when the fish is not moving. When casting the bobber, using the WASD keys or the joystick will also direct it left and right. Once you master this, the mini-game will be a breeze.

11 Early Game Spots

When you first start the game and have no fishing skills, there are two spots where we recommend fishing: the river that runs through Pelican Town and the ocean.

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These two locations will have the easiest-to-catch fish, including the Sardine, Anchovy, Smallmouth Bass, and Sunfish. All four are relatively simple to rein in, with fairly predictable movement, which will allow you to grind those early fishing skill levels up quickly and also sell your catch for a decent price at Willy's shop.

10 Level Up

This is an obvious one. To get better at fishing, you need to fish more (and not get discouraged by the difficulty of the mini-game early on). Once you level up, the green bar in the mini-game will expand in size and make it easier for you to track fish.

To level up fast, we have a recommendation: once you gain access to the Hidden Forest you also gain access to a small pond, which is a great way to gain levels fast. Setting up crab pots when you feel truly frustrated is also a great way to get those levels without actually going through the effort of fishing.