Best How to Fish Mods (Sep 2026): QoL, HUD and Gameplay
Updated 2026-09-02 · Steam How to Fish
The best How to Fish mods right now are the quality-of-life ones: KeepInventory (38,958 downloads) stops death dropping your loot, Stackable_Items (30,141) puts 64 of the same item in one slot, and DynamicCrosshair (18,942) finally shows where your gun is actually pointing. After those, the HUD mods from evansvl and Ice Box Studio add the numbers the vanilla game hides, and SuperCreatures or WildEvents change how the islands actually play. Every download count and version below is from Thunderstore as of 2 September 2026.
Almost every mod on this page needs the same dependency: BepInExPack 5.4.2305 (33 million downloads and counting). A mod manager installs it for you. If you have not set that up yet, start on mods and come back here to pick.
One note before the lists. Aimbot, silent-aim, cheat-menu, god-mode and infinite-money mods do exist for How to Fish on Thunderstore, and several of them sit high in the download charts. This wiki does not cover, explain or recommend them, and nothing below is one of them. Everything here is a HUD, comfort or content mod.
Quality-of-life mods
These are the ones people install first. All of them are additive: they do not touch progression, and most are read-only overlays that draw information the game already computes.
| Mod | Author | Version | Downloads | Updated | Extra dependencies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KeepInventory | WhitetailStudios | 1.0.0 | 38,958 | 2026-08-21 | none |
| Stackable_Items | AtomicStudio | 0.1.4 | 30,141 | 2026-08-29 | none |
| DynamicCrosshair | PapaSalazar | 1.0.0 | 18,942 | 2026-08-21 | none |
| AmmoCounter | Ice_Box_Studio_HTF | 1.0.4 | 14,961 | 2026-09-01 | LocalizationAPI, IdentityAPI |
| FishHP | evansvl | 0.2.2 | 14,346 | 2026-08-25 | none |
| BossHP | evansvl | 0.1.4 | 11,708 | 2026-08-25 | none |
| BossTimer | evansvl | 0.1.6 | 8,649 | 2026-08-22 | none |
| FishHealthBars | JCGGGGGGGG | 1.1.1 | 3,649 | 2026-08-24 | none |
| HeldItemNameHud | Ice_Box_Studio_HTF | 1.0.1 | 6,076 | 2026-08-25 | LocalizationAPI |
KeepInventory puts your held item back into your inventory instead of dropping or launching it on death, and skips the full inventory dump on respawn. If the inventory is genuinely full, the held item lands at your feet. The author notes the host has to have it installed or the server drops items anyway, and that other players should install it too so knockouts look right on their screens.
Stackable_Items lets one slot hold 1 to 100 of the same item, defaulting to 64. Items stay individually tracked, so two stacked fish can still have different properties. The author explicitly recommends backing up your save first and says multiplayer is untested by them, only verified in single-player — treat that as a player-reported caveat, not a guarantee.
DynamicCrosshair exists because How to Fish ships no crosshair at all and the guns are held off to the side of the camera with a physics recoil rig, so the barrel almost never points at the screen centre. It draws the real point of aim, traces the live spread cone, simulates bullet drop for projectiles that travel, and turns red when the muzzle is jammed into a wall or a teammate. F8 toggles it. No Harmony patches, no network traffic.
AmmoCounter is the most actively maintained mod on this page — its 1.0.4 update landed on 1 September 2026, the same day as patch 1.0.11. It shows magazine ammo, weapon name, installed attachments and an optional StatTrak kill counter. StatTrak is the only part that needs the host, which is why IdentityAPI is a dependency; turn it off and the HUD is purely local. The author lists compatibility as game version 1.0.9 and up.
FishHP, BossHP and BossTimer are a set by evansvl in the same native visual style. FishHP stacks synchronised HP bars for living non-boss creatures you have damaged, most recent on top. BossHP prints the boss's exact current and maximum HP next to the native bar and follows its damage shake. BossTimer is the sleeper pick: the vanilla boss UI only reveals its countdown in the final ten seconds, and this shows the whole synchronised timer, going orange at ten seconds and red at five. All three are read-only. Useful reading for the fights on bosses.
FishHealthBars is the alternative to FishHP: overhead bars instead of a corner stack, with always-visible, aim-only and damage-triggered modes, custom RGB colours and an F8 settings window. Pick one or the other, not both. HeldItemNameHud names whatever you are holding above the hotbar and your current bait above the bait box.
Gameplay and content mods
These change how the game plays, so read the multiplayer line before you install one in a co-op lobby.
| Mod | Version | Downloads | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| SuperCreatures | 1.1.5 | 12,693 | Creature scale 0.2x to 25.0x, loot weights, F5 menu |
| RandomCreatureSize | 1.1.3 | 6,050 | Random size per creature, drives weight and price |
| zPaulinsWeaponArsenal | 1.0.1 | 5,349 | Adds a Desert Eagle and an FN FAL to the gun store |
| Minigun | 1.0.3 | 5,302 | Adds a buyable minigun on some islands |
| WildEvents | 1.0.0 | 4,977 | Seahorse Stampede, Piranha Rain, Urchin Invasion |
| OnePunch | 1.0.1 | 4,591 | Energy bar; a full bar makes one punch hit for 9,999 |
| DynamicWeather | 1.1.0 | 4,557 | Day/night cycle, rain, storms, snow, hurricanes |
SuperCreatures is the big one. It scales fish from 0.2x micro to 25x, adjusts colliders and mass so the oversized ones still float and collide sensibly, and exposes drop chances and slot machine payouts through an in-game menu on F5. The author's compatibility badge points at game version 1.0.10.
RandomCreatureSize does something narrower and, in multiplayer, cleaner: one value drives appearance, weight, sell price, save data and network sync at once, rolled on the server so everyone sees the same fish. Since version 1.1 bigger creatures move slower and have proportionally more HP. Bosses use a separate 0.5x to 2x range you can toggle off.
zPaulinsWeaponArsenal adds a Desert Eagle at 9,000 dollars and an FN FAL at 45,000, both sold in the gun store on the last island. Neither takes sight or barrel attachments, only extended mag and bullet upgrades. The author is blunt about the requirement: everyone in the lobby needs the mod at the same version, because a networked weapon is identified by its position in a list. Vanilla prices and attachments are on weapons.
WildEvents schedules a random encounter every 2 to 4 minutes: 10 to 20 seahorses stampeding, 25 to 40 piranhas raining down from about 15.8 metres up, or 18 to 25 sea urchins. Piranha Rain and Urchin Invasion borrow the native boss UI as a progress bar and play boss music, but never register as the real global boss and stand aside when one is active.
DynamicWeather adds a synchronised day/night cycle plus island-specific rain, thunderstorms, snow and hurricanes, with weather-driven changes to movement, traction, boats, waves, fish bite times and reel speed. F6 cycles weather manually, F7 hands it back to automatic. The author states it does not touch saves, money, inventory or progression.
OnePunch and Minigun are the joke picks that are genuinely fun. OnePunch gives you a blue energy bar next to hunger, filled by punching things and eating; at full, the next punch does 9,999 damage. Minigun does exactly what it says. Its author warns that not everything is guaranteed to work across the network.
Multiplayer mods
Vanilla How to Fish is a 1 to 4 player co-op game per the Steam store page, and the lobby cap sits above that in code.
| Mod | Version | Downloads | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| MorePlayers | 0.1.0 | 20,575 | Raises the lobby cap from 8 to 32 |
| BiggerLobbies | 1.0.3 | 5,112 | Configurable lobby size, default 8 |
| NoSharedMoney | 1.4.0 | 12,824 | Per-player wallets instead of one shared pot |
MorePlayers is a single config key, MaxPlayers, defaulting to 32. BiggerLobbies is the same idea with a LobbySize key, and its author cheerfully admits in the README that they are not certain it works — that is an author-reported uncertainty, so test it in a throwaway lobby first. Note it depends on the older BepInExPack 5.4.2100 rather than 5.4.2305. NoSharedMoney splits the shared wallet so everyone earns and spends their own, saved between sessions. Full detail on multiplayer-mods.
Visual, audio and comfort mods
| Mod | Version | Downloads | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| More_Colours | 1.0.5 | 6,454 | Recolour the whole HUD from a new Options screen |
| BetterSwimming | 1.0.3 | 10,594 | Hold to swim and dive instead of mashing jump |
| SeaLegs | 1.0.2 | 9,539 | See your own body in first person |
| ChumBucket | 1.1.0 | 8,939 | Portable bucket, sell a whole pile at once |
| ColorfulPoint | 1.0.1 | 7,072 | Colour-codes item dots by type |
| Fishydex | 0.1.1 | 6,839 | Shows which lure each fish needs |
More_Colours adds a Colours screen to the Options panel with live previews for score popups, hitmarkers, vitals, boss bars, chat and hotbar, each with its own toggle and reset. BetterSwimming replaces the vanilla five-strokes-then-sink model with hold-to-swim, hold-to-dive and treading water, and makes waves actually lift you. SeaLegs restores the body the game deletes on spawn, minus the head. ChumBucket drops a bucket on J and sells the whole pile from one button. ColorfulPoint recolours radar dots by category, which overlaps with the vanilla dot colour change in patch 1.0.11, so check what the base game already does first. Fishydex tells you which lure each fish needs.
If a mod stops working
Patches land fast. Between 20 August and 1 September 2026 the game went from release to 1.0.11, and several READMEs here still list compatibility against 1.0.5. A mod that worked yesterday can break on a Tuesday. ModUpdateChecker (1.0.3, 6,798 downloads) checks your installed mods against their latest Thunderstore versions from inside the game. If something is broken, work through mods-not-working. The complete package list, including everything not featured here, is on all-mods-list.
Sources and last check
Checked 2 September 2026. All version numbers, download counts, dependency strings and update dates come from the Thunderstore How to Fish community listings at thunderstore.io. Feature descriptions are paraphrased from each mod's own README on its Thunderstore page, which makes them author-reported rather than independently verified: the multiplayer caveats for Stackable_Items, BiggerLobbies and Minigun are the mod authors' own words about their own untested cases, and the compatibility versions listed (1.0.5, 1.0.9, 1.0.10) are whatever each author last wrote down. Game facts are official: the 1 to 4 player co-op figure is from the Steam store page for How to Fish, and the item-dot colour change is from the developer patch notes for 1.0.11, published 1 September 2026 by Dazed Games.