Question about the stronger/rarer/trickier fish

[Scorpion]

Like the Ice Pip, Lava Eel and Octopi.

Those fish are particularly nasty. The low encounter chance is one thing, but them hopping up and down like crazy, is another! With Fishing 9, Iridium Rod, Trap Bobber and Bait, yet still they bounce like fools and the line breaks. Just your eye following them brings pain to your brain, let alone the clicking to follow after them.

Is there something to make them move more manage-ably? Post some serious training and excessive gittin gud sessions, i managed to catch the Ice Pip, but the other two, are known stinkers!

Will Maxing the Fishing skill and/or eating food that buffs fishing, cut it?

[Dimensional Traveler]

Maxing your fishing skill and eating buff foods will help but some fish are just hard to catch by design. If you really want to bypass it there are mods to do that.

[red255]

oh look, steam is allowing us to post responses, with fishing 10 and a trap bobber I only had issues with the Legend fish (haven't caught an octopus yet) legend fish took me like 4 attempts. some attempts are easier than others, keep at it.

[happybjorn]

General advice for fishing would be:
1) Tap the button (don't hold it down)
2) Learn how fish move and try to place your bar so it moves with the fish.
3) Don't panic.

[Zyphrexi]

one thing i really liked about dredge was that there was an accessibility mode where you'd eventually catch it, but it would take longer. I always wished stardew valley had a mode like that. Some people just aren't good at this or have disabilities or are on medication that makes it impossible. The only thing you can really do is keep trying until you get it unfortunately, or do what others have suggested and use mods.

[NBOX21]

Some food items will provide temporary boosts to your fishing level, which can also go above 10. For example, Seafoam Pudding[stardewvalleywiki.com] increases your fishing level by 4, while Lobster Bisque[stardewvalleywiki.com] increases your fishing level by 3. Which means it's possible to increase your fishing level up to a maximum of 14 even if it's just temporary. Higher fishing levels results in a bigger "green bar" which makes catching fish a bit easier.

Sadly, you cannot stack multiple food items at once as you can only receive the stat boosts from the last meal you consumed. Any stat boosts provided by meals will expire as soon as you eat something else, with Coffee and Triple Shot Espresso being the only exceptions.

[Hiroko]

"Is there something to make them move more manage-ably?"
Outside of mods, no. It mostly comes down to skill as a combination of learning their patterns and mechanically getting used to moving the bar. Each fish has the same pattern every time you find it, but in essence there are only about 3 patterns at any fishing spot at any point of the day, with variot in severity and frequency of darts. Temporarily memorize which ques = which fish and their movement patterns
The main things to look for are:
- Is it shaking? Thats a sign that the fish pattern is more on the extreme side of quick, big darts.
- not shaky but still moving? probably gunna dart up and down but usually less dramatic and less frequent
- is it just staying at the bottom? easy game
- is it just gradually floating up? easy game, but they sometimes dart.
You can generally keep the bar off-centered, with more of the bar towards the middle of the mini game. Fish don't usually dart low when they are low, or high when they are high, so this gives a small advantage. A very select few fish make big darts constantly, and can sometimes benefit from not chasing the fish on a huge dart and only making minor adjustments while praying it darts back immediately. The bigger your bar, the more effectively you can just hover near the center of the minigame.

"Will Maxing the Fishing skill and/or eating food that buffs fishing, cut it?"
Yes. Technically speaking, any fish that can bite can be caught, but realistically the harder fish and perfect catches are more consistent depending on skill level around 4+. Fishing level increases the size of the green bar, decreases max time for fish to bite (the waiting part before a minigame), and decreases energy cost of casting. I usually just keep a stockpile of soup (+1) from willy as the efficiency makes them a net positive at any stage, but there are other foods with fishing buffs, enchantments (late game), qi seasoning (late game). You can also try a Cork Bobber for bigger bar.

Originally posted by NBOX21:

Sadly, you cannot stack multiple food items at once as you can only receive the stat boosts from the last meal you consumed. Any stat boosts provided by meals will expire as soon as you eat something else, with Coffee and Triple Shot Espresso being the only exceptions.

Just to clarify, you can obtain buffs from 1 food and 1 drink at the same time, but there are 4 drinks that give a buff (coffee, espresso, green tea, ginger ale). In addition to food / drink stat buffs, there are state buffs/debuffs that only consider the last time the effect was gained, but will not overwrite/stop by eating other foods. For example, drinking alcohol makes you tipsy, which carries a speed penalty.

[hashmid]

personally I tap on the keyboard rather than mouse for the hard fish. the fights tend to be long winded so my fingers hurt if I use a mouse. otherwise I got all the guardian fish with the max skill+ food buff+ trap bobber