fishing sucks

[Negligent Discharge]

even for small fish you don't have enough stamina to actually catch one

[Tenoshii]

What is the level of the fish you are trying to catch vs. your total stamina and the equipment level of your fishing rod?

I was able to catch level 30 rainbow trout with the equipment level 20 fishing rod and 75 stamina. Trick is to keep your fishing rod pointed at the fish to keep slack in the line as you reel it in.

[Negligent Discharge]

The first fish I hooked was 30, but 10s were breaking away too. Fully rested and fed with 20 gear score.

[Tenoshii]

Originally posted by Negligent Discharge:

The first fish I hooked was 30, but 10s were breaking away too. Fully rested and fed with 20 gear score.

Weird, I literally was doing testing and didn't move at all after hooking a level 10 fish and I didn't use up all the stamina or break the line.

[Negligent Discharge]

I mean, I'm sure I'm just an idiot, but the fishing doesn't seem very intuitive. I can't remember if there was a pop up explaining it, but I don't think there was.

[Dagmar]

Catching a fish in Nightingale (somewhat similar to reality), a matter of you wearing down the fish before it wears you down.

You cast the line wherever you like (as long as it's in water), wait for a fish to bite, and then you click. Now you keep the pole mostly pointed at the fish (to reduce tension) and just follow it around and hold the button to keep reeling it in as it swims back and forth and gets closer to you.

From all appearances, the tension bar drains the fish's health the most when it's in the middle, so, you can speed the process up a bit by not pointing the rod directly at the fish, but keeping it off center enough so that the tension bar stays as close to the middle as you can get it.

If you don't have enough stamina, it's probably because you didn't eat anything. You should be able to catch the "10" fish without a food buff, but as with most activities in this game, having a food buff is a great help because it boosts your health regen and increases your stamina.

Now, as to why one would catch fish, that's easy... Fish-based meal buffs stack with meat-based meal buffs. With both of those and a vegetable/fruit buff you'll find a lot of things (like swinging a weapon around) to be much easier.

...for the sake of completeness I'll mention at the moment there only seems to be two fish per biome, one that's 10 and one that's 30. Also note that the little oasis that appears in the "dungeon" realms (the ones you get to through the disc portal) generally have a different set of fish than the realm you came from. I've yet to see rare fish or anything other than fish spawn this way (although you'll occasionally get some essence when fishing).

[Breezwer]

defiantly need +stamina charms and raw resources to make your fishing rod. Also look for +stamina food.
I have yet to buy the tier V fishing rod. Hopefully that is the key to making it easier (for me)

[Lyote]

You don't need any special gear to make fishing easy.

The game tells you what to do in a bunch of places, including the actual fishing tutorial and load screen tips.

But basically, the goal is to keep tension as close to middle as you can while reeling.

Reeling while above the mid point is a stamina drain penalty.
You can manage tension by keeping the rod pointed at the fish and tilting your aim up to increase and down decrease tension.

You can also stop reeling, wait a moment and your stamina will begin regenerating.
So if you can't pull the fish in before running out, reel it in bursts to allow it time to regenerate between reels. Just don't let the fish break the tension and you can keep it hooked without reeling.

You can also build a hut and campfire to make stamina management easier while fishing.
Just 1 foundation, 1 wall and a roof piece is enough.

[Powerferret]

The way i understand it, you are supposed to keep the bar in the center of the tension meter. That seems to work the best for me.

[Bored Peon]

The level of your rod determines the damage to the fish.
When you keep the fishing bar in the middle or left it inflicts damage to the fish.
When low on stamina stop doing anything, after a few seconds your stamina will regenerate.

When you upgrade your pole and your gear fishing becomes easy and boring as you just cast and reel in without doing anything special.

[Minterfresh]

Make your rod from Shimmering Ore and Softwood.

[Kaziklu78]

are you letting the bar on screen go past the half way mark?

fishing is just hold the button down and keep facing the fish. don't let the bar go past the half way mark.... just like more than half way wet is a debuff, more than half hot is a debuff... keep the bar as low as possible

[DeathSpectrum]

When i was at low gear score i would just stop reeling and let my stam recover a bit before reeling again.

Wait till you do the quest where you have to catch "16" swamp fish so you can make 8 oil out of it. I had youtube shorts on my phone, man it was boring.

Playing alone when some of the quest was designed for multiple people is FUN FUN FUN

Time for me to get back on the grind!

[Martin]

weird i was falling asleep catching fish.. at one point I got over 60 of them.. 18 fen bass and some 52 redsomething bass.. i was using a T2 fishing rod made with what I thought was the best materials..

[Negligent Discharge]

This is so weird. Trying to keep it closer to the center of the tension bar was draining my stamina so fast but just constantly reeling in and keeping it as low as possible was the only was to get it to work for me.

[MassivelyIndie]

This whole conversation makes me never want to try fishing. How long does it take to actually bring a fish in?