How to Fish Items & Gear

Everything the island shops sell

How to Fish drops a shop on every island but explains almost nothing about what each item actually does. The catalog is small at the Lighthouse and grows as you unlock the Forest, Desert, Rocks, and Volcano, with the later islands stocking the widest range of gear and upgrades. Broadly, everything on the shelves falls into a few buckets: fishing gear, weapons, boat upgrades, consumables and bait, storage, and pure novelties. This hub sorts them out, lists the prices we could confirm, and points to the deeper pages listed below.

Two rules cut through most of the early confusion. First, always carry the lure tier that matches the island you are fishing, because old lures stop working the further out you sail. Second, do not sell every unusual catch, because several bosses need another creature or a specific item as bait. The clearest example is the beer used to summon the Spider Crab, which we break down step by step on its own page.

Confirmed shop prices at a glance

These are the purchase costs we could confirm from guides, useful for budgeting a run. Every figure is as of 2026-08-28 and was mostly recorded in co-op, so solo prices may differ slightly.

Item	Price	Notes
Basic Fishing Rod	$3	First purchase, at the Lighthouse
Beer	$12	Bait for the Spider Crab
Brass Knuckles	$24	Starter melee, punch damage
Dynamite	$25	Kills several fish at once
Knife	$45	Sharpen at the anvil to raise damage to 20
Radar	$10	Locates islands by coordinates
Beginner Boss Lure	$40	Cheapest mini-boss summon
Shotgun	$150	Standout early gun
Basic boat engine	$230	At the Forest shack
Standard Boss Lure	$280	Mini-boss lure
Dual Motors	$860	Top-tier boat engine
Professional Boss Lure	$1,200	Mini-boss lure
Scientific Boss Lure	$5,800	Endgame optional mini-boss

Rods, lures, and boss lures

Fishing gear is the spine of the game's progression. The Basic Fishing Rod costs $3 at the Lighthouse and should be your very first purchase, and the standard Fishing Rod takes over from the Forest onward and carries you to the end. Standard lures act as bait to draw fish in, and they are tiered to each island rather than one-size-fits-all. Arriving with the wrong tier simply wastes your time.

Here is how the standard bait lines up with each island:

Island	Standard bait
Lighthouse	Free Lure, then Hot Dog Lure
Forest	Free Lure / Beginner Lure
Desert	Standard Lure
Rocks	Professional Lure
Volcano	Scientific Lure

Boss lures are a separate class. Each island's main boss demands a dedicated island boss lure that you earn from a quest and can never buy, while the optional mini-bosses use lures that the shops do sell. Those mini-boss lures climb steeply in price: the Beginner Boss Lure is $40 (the cheapest summon in the game), the Standard Boss Lure is $280, the Professional Boss Lure is $1,200, and the Scientific Boss Lure runs $5,800 (all as of 2026-08-28). It is worth budgeting for the Scientific one before you spend your endgame money elsewhere.

One durability quirk matters for planning. Regular lures and mini-boss lures have a chance to break on use and vanish in a puff of smoke, so carry spares of the expensive ones. Island boss lures, by contrast, are always consumed on every single use, so treat each one as a single shot.

Weapons: fists, guns, and attachments

Melee weapons cover the opening hours. Brass Knuckles cost $24 and add punch damage if you prefer fists, while the Knife costs $45 and can be sharpened at the anvil by the Lighthouse door to push its damage up to 20, which is enough for bigger crustacean catches. Either one makes the Spider Crab far more manageable than bare fists.

Guns are where the real progression happens. The lineup is Pistol, Shotgun, SMG, Sniper Rifle, and Assault Rifle, and the common advice is to skip the Pistol entirely. The Shotgun costs $150 and is the standout early firearm, especially once you invest in its bullet upgrades. You need an Assault Rifle before the whale fight on the Volcano, and ranged targets like the Albatross favor an SMG or Sniper Rifle since they fly out of buckshot range.

Every weapon has four attachment slots, added to the pool as you progress. They are an extended magazine, a laser sight, a red dot or sniper scope, and a compensator or suppressor, with the sniper scope and suppressor unlocking on the Rocks island. Kitting out a single Assault Rifle with all four is both a requirement for the final boss and the way to unlock the "Fully equipped" achievement, covered in our achievement guide.

Boat gear: radar, engines, and dynamite

The Radar costs $10 and locates islands by their coordinates so you can sail to them without getting lost, and a separate radar boat upgrade mounts it on the boat so you no longer have to equip it by hand. Buying the Radar right after the first boss is a common recommendation. Engine upgrades raise your boat's movement speed: a basic engine runs $230 at the Forest shack, while the top-tier Dual Motors cost $860 (as of 2026-08-28).

Dynamite is the cheapest problem-solver in the game at $25. A single blast can kill several fish at once, which makes it a fast food source, though it lowers the sell value of what it catches. It is best treated as a way to stock cooked fish for boss fights rather than a money strategy, and you should never use it as a combat weapon at close range because the self-damage will kill you.

Bait, quest items, and getting the most value

Some of the most important "items" are not weapons at all. Beer costs $12 and exists purely as bait: you buy it, have the Lighthouse keeper drink it, and use the empty can he crushes to fish up the Spider Crab. Several other bosses work the same way, using a caught creature or an odd item as bait, which is why it pays to hold onto unusual catches instead of selling them; our bosses hub maps out which bait each fight needs.

Selling itself has a hidden layer. Cooking a fish on a grill raises its value from 1x up to 1.5x before it burns, and that same 1.5x multiplier applies to weapons and other items too, so cook anything before you sell it. On the Volcano, lava cooks at exactly 1.5x with no timing risk, making it the best place to prep a pile of high-value goods.

Utility, storage, and novelty items

A handful of purchases exist for storage or plain fun rather than fishing. Inventory Slots give you +1 storage from each island, and they are genuinely worth grabbing because more cooked fish on deck is what decides the late boss fights. Keep an eye out for hotbar slot upgrades alongside them as you unlock new areas.

The rest are cosmetic. The Radio simply plays music aboard your boat, the Badball is a floating ball you can pass to friends with no gameplay function, and the Disc works like a Frisbee you can throw around during downtime. None of them affect a run, so buy them only if you want the co-op flavor.

What to buy first, and a note on prices

If you want a shortlist, it is short by design. Grab the $3 rod and the matching lure, make a Knife or Brass Knuckles your early melee, buy the Radar after the first boss, then save toward the Shotgun and its bullet upgrades before the Assault Rifle for the endgame. Because the game is short, there is little reason to max out every purchase, so prioritize the essentials and let the rest stay optional.

Treat every number here as a snapshot. The confirmed prices above are drawn from community and editorial guides written around game versions 1.0.4 and 1.0.5, and most were recorded during a co-op run; solo weapon-upgrade costs may be lower, though lures and guns appear to cost the same either way. Prices and mechanics can shift with patches, so use these as a budgeting guide rather than a guarantee. For related planning, see the islands and map hub and the full fish and bait list.