How to Fish Bait and Lure Guide: What Each Bait Catches

Updated 2026-09-02 · Steam How to Fish

What bait do you need in How to Fish? The short version of any How to Fish bait guide is that the lure on your rod decides what bites, not the island you are standing on. There are four ranked lures (Beginner, Standard, Professional, Scientific), a handful of cheap food baits for crabs and small fish, four mini-boss lures you buy in shops, and six island boss baits that only come from quests and cannot be bought at all.

Player guides count 49 creatures in the game and map every one of them to a bait or lure. The lists below merge three community guides: the Bait and Fish Guide, ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS and the Lure Guide, plus the bait database published in the BaitIndex mod's README. All of it is player-tested rather than official, and where the lists disagree this page says so instead of picking a winner.

Cheap rod baits (islands 1 and 2)

These are the food-item baits you start with, and naming is the messiest part of the whole system. Every source uses different words for the same few items, and no two of them agree on the exact catch lists, so the table below keeps each source separate rather than blending them into one row. Match the picture in your bait box rather than the word.

Bait, as that source names it	Where the list comes from	Creatures that source ties to it
Free Bait	ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS	Rock Crab, Goldfish, Pike, Gar, Mackerel, Shrimp, Brown Crab
Basic Lure, questioned as "the chip"	Lure Guide	Goldfish, Pike, Gar, Mackerel, Shrimp, Brown Crab (no Rock Crab)
Ham, used on the crab fishing rod	Bait and Fish Guide	Shrimp and Brown Crab only
French Fry, used on the fishing rod	Bait and Fish Guide	Pike, Gar, Mackerel
French Fry, called the default starting bait	BaitIndex mod README	Pike, Gar, Mackerel, Shrimp, Brown Crab
Sausage	ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS	Lobster, Piranha, Rock Crab, Brown Crab
Hot Dog	Bait and Fish Guide and Lure Guide	Lobster and Rock Crab only
Hotdog	BaitIndex mod README	Lobster, Piranha, Rock Crab
Coconut	Bait and Fish Guide	"Bing Bong" — not confirmed yet; that creature is absent from the 49-creature list

Two disagreements are worth reading before you buy anything. First, the starter bait: ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS is the only source that lets it pull Rock Crab, the Lure Guide drops Rock Crab but keeps Goldfish, the mod README drops both, and the Bait and Fish Guide splits the same catches across two separate items (Ham and French Fry) instead of one. Second, the sausage-shaped bait: ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS calls it Sausage and adds Piranha and Brown Crab, the other two guides call it Hot Dog and list only Rock Crab and Lobster, and the mod README sits in between with Piranha but no Brown Crab. Practical reading: Rock Crab, Lobster, Shrimp, Brown Crab, Mackerel, Gar and Pike are all reachable with the two cheap food baits, so try the other one before assuming a fish is out of reach.

The crab fishing rod itself is $3 on island 1, per the Bean 1.0.5 speedrun guide. One player guide specifically recommends skipping hot dogs on island 1 and fishing for cash instead.

The four ranked lures

Every ordinary fish in the game is tied to one of these four. Buy the next tier as soon as you reach the island that sells it: see islands for what each shop stocks.

Lure	Creatures it catches (player-tested)
Beginner Lure	Cod, Goby, Pike, Perch, Triggerfish, Goldfish, Piranha (disputed), Salmon (disputed)
Standard Lure (pink)	Catfish, Clownfish, Sea Urchin, Yellow Boxfish, Needlefish, Angelfish, Bluegill, Seahorse, Bowlfish
Professional Lure	Bass, Eel, Red Snapper, Sengarat, Halibut, Tigerfish, Flying Fish, Voxel Fish, Parrotfish, Dripper
Scientific Lure	Blobfish, Oarfish, Anglerfish, Stonefish, Superdwarf Fish

Four disagreements worth knowing, all of them between player-tested lists rather than anything official. ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS puts Salmon under the Standard Lure, while the Bait and Fish Guide and the Lure Guide both file it under the Beginner Lure, so try Beginner first and fall back if nothing bites. Piranha splits the same way: the Bait and Fish Guide and the Lure Guide both list it as a Beginner Lure catch, but ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS ties Piranha to Sausage bait only and never to a lure, so if the Beginner Lure is not producing one, put a sausage on the rod instead. The Bait and Fish Guide also puts Sunfish in its Beginner Lure list, which neither of the other two guides does; both of them, and the mini-boss table below, give Sunfish to the Beginner Boss Lure, so the plain-lure listing is not confirmed yet and is left out of the table above. Separately, the Bait and Fish Guide lists Blue Shark among its Standard Lure catches, but the other two guides say Blue Shark comes only from the Standard Boss Lure, which matches how the shark quest works on island 3.

Anglerfish were nerfed in patch 1.0.10 (27 August 2026) because they had too much health, so a Scientific Lure catch today is easier to kill than early guides describe. Patch 1.0.11 (1 September 2026) fixed drip parrotfish not being cooked. Full history is on patch notes.

Mini-boss lures you can buy

Only mini-boss lures are sold in shops. Prices below come from the All 28 Achievements guide, recorded on a multiplayer run at version 1.0.4, and the author notes lures appear to cost the same solo or in co-op. Prices are player-reported and have not been re-tested on 1.0.11.

Lure	Price	Sold on	Summons
Beginner Boss Lure	$40	Island 2	The Old Pike and Sunfish
Standard Boss Lure	$280	Island 3	Blue Shark
Professional Boss Lure	$1,200	Island 4	Tuna
Scientific Boss Lure	$5,800	Island 5	Goblin Shark

At $40 the Beginner Boss Lure is the least expensive mini-boss summon players report, and you can finish the story without ever buying one, but two achievements depend on it. The Scientific Boss Lure is the most expensive item most players will ever buy for a single fish, and its mini-boss is not mentioned anywhere in the story, so budget for it before spending endgame money. See achievements for which ones need each lure.

Island boss baits (quest only)

Island boss baits cannot be bought at any price. Every island has a quest that hands you one, and each is consumed on use with no durability roll. Everything in this section is player-tested: the quest steps come from the All 28 Achievements guide and ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS, and no patch note confirms them.

Bait	Boss	How you get it
Empty Beer Can	Spider Crab	Buy beer from the lighthouse shop, then hand it over to the elderly man sitting outside; he returns the empty container
Modified Leech	Giant Piranha	Find 3 leeches in the tall grass on island 2 and give them to the lady in the forest
Carrot	Pufferfish	Give the tourist an endangered fish (Needlefish, Bowlfish or Seahorse all work)
Tuna	Albatross	Fish up the tuna with the Professional Boss Lure, then drop its body on the ground as bait
Fish Bucket	Bowhead Whale	Give the scientist on island 5 five fish of any kind
Bowhead Whale	Mutated Bowhead Whale	Throw the dead whale into the volcano

The tuna is the odd one out: it is a mini-boss you summon with a purchased lure, and then its corpse becomes the bait for the next boss. Players report that the lure itself may survive that fight thanks to its durability roll, while the tuna is always consumed. Boss order and strategy live on bosses, and the leech chain is covered on leeches.

Durability, and how the game picks your catch

Ordinary lures and the shop-bought mini-boss lures both roll for durability each time you use them, and a failed roll destroys the lure on the spot. Quest boss baits skip that roll: they are used up on every single cast. This is player-reported from the All 28 Achievements guide.
What you catch is decided by the lure you have equipped, not the island you are on. The All 28 Achievements guide carries this as a reader correction to an earlier version of its own text, and its author reports finishing the creature encyclopedia entirely from island 5 by cycling lures. The date of that correction is not confirmed yet.
Press Tab to open the encyclopedia. It tracks every creature plus drip variants separately and shows what you are missing, though it does not tell you which lure to use.

Drip and shiny variants use the same bait

Drip creatures are rare variants with rainbow name text and deliberately goofy skins. Players report a 10% chance for an eligible non-boss catch to come up drip, and shiny variants use the same bait as their normal version. Bosses are excluded.

One player-tested farming trick from the Bait and Fish Guide: after casting, reel in slowly, and right click while reeling to shake off anything that is not drip. Only spam the reel when a drip creature bites. The guide's author reports around 5 to 8 bites per cast this way. Treat that number as one player's testing, not a measured drop table.

Mods that show bait requirements

The encyclopedia does not tell you which lure to equip, which is exactly the gap these three Thunderstore mods fill.

Mod	Version	Downloads	What it does
Fishydex	0.1.1	6,839	Shows what lure you need to catch a fish
BaitIndex	1.0.50	2,618	Prints the bait or lure for each creature inside the Tab journal, with a drip view toggle
HeldItemNameHud	1.0.1	6,076	Names the item in your hand and shows your current bait above the bait box

Download counts are from Thunderstore as of 2 September 2026. All three need the BepInEx pack; installation is covered on mods. Cheat menus that simply spawn every bait also exist on Thunderstore, and this site does not cover them.

Sources and last check

Checked 2 September 2026. The three bait lists are the Steam Community guides "Bait and Fish Guide" (id 3789044055), "ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS" (id 3789629297) and "Lure Guide" (id 3788453157); all creature-to-lure pairings, the 49-creature count, the 10% drip rate and the reeling trick come from those and are player-tested, not official. The fourth cheap-bait list in the table above is the bait database in the README of the Thunderstore mod BaitIndex by Ponchik, which is a mod author's claim rather than a developer statement. Lure prices, the durability rule, the quest chains and the "lure decides the catch" correction come from the Steam guide "How to Fish - All 28 Achievements + Post-Game Route" (id 3788027308), recorded on version 1.0.4 in multiplayer and not re-tested since. The $3 crab rod price and the advice to skip hot dogs on island 1 come from the Steam guide "Updated Bean Achievement Guide: How to Fish v1.05 Sub-1-Hour Speedrun" (id 3788675682). The Coconut and "Bing Bong" entry appears in only one guide and is not confirmed. The anglerfish health nerf and the drip parrotfish cooking fix are from the official Dazed Games patch notes for 1.0.10 (27 August 2026) and 1.0.11 (1 September 2026). Mod versions and download counts are from Thunderstore.