How to Fish Guide

What How to Fish actually is

How to Fish is a 1-4 player physics-based fishing game from Dazed Games, released on Steam on August 20, 2026 for $7.99 (as of 2026-08-28). Your boat crashes onto a small island, and you work your way home across five locations. The loop is simple to say and slow to master: catch creatures, kill them, sell them, and spend the money on gear that reaches creatures worth more. It launched Windows-only and had gathered 28,559 recommendations on Steam at the time of writing.

The game is a sandbox with no single fixed path, so guides differ on the exact order of small purchases. This hub gives you the spine of a run: the island route, every boss, and where your first coins should go. For the two things players search for most after the basics, see the dedicated achievement guide and the speedrun page.

The island route

The route runs Lighthouse, Forest, Desert, Rocks, Volcano. Different sources number these islands differently, so this wiki uses the location names to avoid confusion. You cannot pick islands freely at the start; each one opens only after you finish the previous island's boss quest and hand over the trophy item.

The most common progression complaint is beating a boss and finding nothing unlocked. That is by design. Every boss drops a distinct trophy, never a plain meat chunk, and an NPC wants that exact item. If dialogue will not advance, check what you are carrying before you fish anything else.

Every boss in order

Bosses gate movement between islands, and each one has a bait you either buy or earn through a quest. Note that island boss lures cannot be purchased; only mini-boss lures are sold in shops. The table below tracks the main fight on each island and the item it drops.

Island	Boss	How you summon it	Trophy it drops
Lighthouse	Spider Crab	Bait the rod with a beer can	Shell (buys boat keys)
Forest	Giant Piranha	Give the lady 3 leeches for the bait	Tail (the lady's dinner)
Desert	Blue Shark	Standard Boss Lure	Meat that activates the grill
Desert	Pufferfish	Carrot from the tourist (feed him a needlefish)	Fin for the tourist
Rocks	Tuna, then a giant bird	Professional Boss Lure, then drop the tuna as bait	Head for the NPC
Volcano	Whale	Give the scientist 5 fish for the whale bait	Carcass to throw in the volcano
Volcano	Lava whale (final boss)	Throw the whale carcass into the volcano	Tail (buys the RHIB keys)

The Spider Crab is the easiest fight and the only one that stunlocks: dodge its charge, get behind it, and hit while it is stunned. Later bosses never stun, so do not build a habit around it. The lava whale, also called the Mutated Bowhead Whale, is the one genuinely hard fight; it spits lava, launches into the air, and can kill you in a couple of hits, so bring a maxed assault rifle and a large stock of cooked fish.

Gear and shop priorities

Your first purchase is the Basic Fishing Rod, and everything else is funded by selling what you catch. Buy a knife early and sharpen it to raise its damage, then move up to the shotgun on the Forest island rather than wasting money on the pistol. Later islands add the Uzi, sniper rifle and assault rifle, plus four attachment slots per weapon: extended mag, laser sight, a red dot or sniper scope, and a compensator or suppressor.

Prices below come from a multiplayer run documented by a community 100% guide; weapon upgrades appear to cost less solo, while lures and guns seem to cost the same either way. Treat these as a planning guide, not a fixed price list, and note that prices can shift between patches.

Item	Price (as of 2026-08-28)	Why it matters
Basic Fishing Rod	$3	Your first purchase at the Lighthouse
Hotdog Lure	$1 each	Reaches bigger early catches
Radar	$10	Bought from the keeper after the Spider Crab
Dynamite	$25	A food source, not a combat weapon
Beginner Boss Lure	$40	Cheapest mini-boss summon; useful for later achievements
Boat engine (mid-tier)	$230	Sold on the Forest island
Standard Boss Lure	$280	Summons the Blue Shark
Dual Motors (best engine)	$860	The fastest boat engine, by the grill
Professional Boss Lure	$1,200	Summons the Tuna mini-boss on Rocks
Scientific Boss Lure	$5,800	Volcano's optional mini-boss; budget for it early

Do not use dynamite as a weapon, since the self-damage will kill you. It is best treated as a quick way to gather fish for food and for the scientist's five-fish quest.

Cooking, money and the roulette

Once you beat the Blue Shark and start the grill, cooking becomes your main money multiplier. Press F to inspect a fish and watch its value climb from 1x to 1.5x over the flame, then pull it before it turns solid black and worthless. The 1.5x bonus also applies to guns and other items, so cook a weapon before you sell it.

On the Volcano, lava cooks everything at exactly 1.5x with no timing risk, so build a large pile of cooked fish before both final fights. For serious cash, the Reel of Fortune roulette pays 35x on green, and you sell the item it hands you. It is high variance rather than a reliable farm, so most players still fund lures by selling normally and only bet high-value cooked fish.

Collection, lures and the endgame

Press Tab early to open the in-game encyclopedia, which lists every creature and tracks the rare drip variants separately. It shows what you are missing but not where to find it, and it is the key to the collection achievements. The important rule is that what you catch is decided by the lure you have equipped, not the island you are standing on, so you can complete your collection entirely from the Volcano once you own every lure.

Drip creatures are the rainbow-named rare variants, and they are the currency for the Reel of Fortune, where you gamble them for weapon skins. They respawn indefinitely, so nothing you spend there is lost for good. Buying extra inventory and hotbar slots is worth it too, since more cooked fish on deck is what decides the late boss fights.

Beating the lava whale is not quite the end. It drops a tail, you hand the tail to the scientist, take the RHIB keys, and the ending plays. After the credits you wake up back on the Lighthouse island with all your gear and every weapon upgrade, and all five islands are open. This free-roam state is where most players clean up trick shots, fast boss kills and collection gaps, rather than risking them during the story.

Co-op, solo and difficulty

The Steam 100% guide reports that 26 of the 28 achievements are comfortably within reach for anyone; the low completion percentages reflect players stopping, not difficulty. Only the final boss and the Bean one-hour run are genuinely demanding. Play co-op when you can, because extra guns make bosses easier and teammates can revive you instead of a full death.

The one exception is Bean, the sub-one-hour finish, which is better done solo and on a separate save file. That achievement's exploit route was patched in version 1.0.5, so treat any older one-hour route as unverified until a working replacement is confirmed. For the full 28-achievement checklist and the post-game cleanup order, head to the achievement guide; for the timed run itself, see the speedrun page.