How to Fish Islands and Map: All 6 Islands in Order

Updated 2026-09-02 · Steam How to Fish

The How to Fish game map is a straight line of five story islands, plus a hidden sixth outside the normal route: Lighthouse Island, Piranha Island, Pufferfish Island, Albatross Island and Volcano Island, in that order. You never pick a destination freely. Each island holds one quest, one story boss and one reward that lights up the next stop on your boat radar, so the map is a checklist rather than an open sea.

The names are the ones player guides use; the game numbers islands rather than naming them. The small Fandom wiki calls the route five island stages and ten boss encounters, Spider Crab to Mutated Bowhead Whale.

Island order at a glance

#	Name players use	Story boss	Bait that summons it	What the island gives you
1	Lighthouse Island	Spider Crab	Empty beer can from the lighthouse keeper	Boat keys, radar, first weapons
2	Piranha Island	Giant Piranha	Modified leech from the woman in the forest	Engine upgrade, dynamite, shotgun
3	Pufferfish Island	Pufferfish	Carrot from the tourist	Grill access, SMG, attachments
4	Albatross Island	Albatross	A dead tuna dropped on the ground	Best engine, sniper rifle, casino
5	Volcano Island	Bowhead Whale, then Mutated Bowhead Whale	Fish bucket from the scientist	Lava cooking, every lure, the ending
6	DevIsland	None	Not applicable	Not part of normal navigation

Fight strategies for each are on bosses.

How you unlock travel

Travel is gated, and every speedrun guide describes the same chain:

Kill the Spider Crab on island 1 and carry its shell back to the lighthouse keeper. He pays you in boat keys, and those keys are the real gate on leaving the starting island.
Buy the radar from the same old man. It shows a green marker for the next island; without it you steer by landmarks.
Finish each island's quest. Returning the boss trophy produces the tracker for the next island, so the radar gains a light each stage.
Buy engine upgrades as you go; they change travel speed, not access.

Patch 1.0.5 (22 August 2026) closed a bug that let players sail to any island without unlocking it. Patch 1.0.4 (21 August 2026) made the intended path up to the final island easier to see.

Boat upgrade	Island	Player-reported price
Boat keys	1	Free, from the Spider Crab shell
Radar	1	From the lighthouse keeper, price not confirmed yet
Engine upgrade	2	$230, and players call it the cheaper of the two engine tiers
Mid-tier engine	3	Not confirmed yet
Dual Motors	4	$860, and players call it the best engine in the game

Every price here is player-reported, mostly from multiplayer runs; players note weapon upgrades are cheaper solo.

Island 1: Lighthouse Island

The crash site and the tutorial. No real fishing, only crabbing: pick clams off the rocks and sell them to the lighthouse keeper. Players report a $60 opening kit of crab rod ($3), beer ($12) and knife ($45). Brass knuckles are the island's other melee option and one duo route waits until both players carry them, but no guide gives their price, and another tells you to skip them because the knife hits much harder. Give the beer to the old man on the bench and he hands back the empty can that baits the Spider Crab, the only boss players say stunlocks after its charge. A Reel of Fortune slot machine sits here as on every island, its skin pool growing as you unlock islands.

Island 2: Piranha Island

The forest island, and the only one with grass tall enough to hide loot. Three leeches lie on the ground; hand them to the woman on the rock for the boss bait. Guides call the Giant Piranha's drop either a skeleton or a tail, but both agree you return it to her for the tracker to the next island.

Shops sell dynamite ($25), the shotgun ($150), the Beginner Boss Lure ($40) and the first inventory slot. Guides disagree on the pistol: one recommends it, another says save for the shotgun, which most speedrun routes do. Upgrade order is on weapons.

Island 3: Pufferfish Island

Coconut trees everywhere; they block your dodges, though players report the mini-boss shark occasionally snags on one. Two systems unlock here.

The grill. The grill master opens it only after you owe him a shark: spend $280 on the Standard Boss Lure, land the Blue Shark, kill it and carry it back to him. Cooking lifts an item's value from 1x to a peak of 1.5x, then to zero if it goes solid black, and it works on weapons too.
Attachments. Four slots per weapon: extended mag, laser sight, red dot and compensator, roughly $2,500 to fill on the Uzi.

The tourist here wants an endangered fish; needlefish, bowlfish and seahorse all work on the standard lure. He trades it for a carrot, the Pufferfish bait. The SMG sells for $650.

Island 4: Albatross Island

Two fights stacked together. Buy the Professional Boss Lure ($1,200), fish up the Tuna mini-boss, kill it, then drop the corpse on open ground and the Albatross comes for it. The lure may survive its durability roll; the tuna is always consumed. The island adds the sniper rifle, sniper scope and suppressor, sells the Dual Motors engine at $860, and has a casino that players rate as the best spot for visibility in that fight. The cover advice in the guides is simply to shelter inside a building, and to track the bird by the red dot that every enemy shows through walls.

Island 5: Volcano Island

The last story island and the best place to farm anything. Dropping a fish in lava hands you the full 1.5x every time, with no cooking window to judge, every lure including the Scientific Boss Lure ($5,800) is sold here, and fish values are the highest in the game. Give the scientist in the hazmat suit five fish of any kind for the whale bait.

Kill the Bowhead Whale, carry its body up the volcano path and throw it in. That spawns the Mutated Bowhead Whale, which adds lava pools and meteorites to the whale's charge and stomp. Its tail goes back to the scientist for the RHIB keys and the ending. Players point out the footsnails by the lava streams: cooked on lava they heal almost a full bar. Roulette is here too, and players report the green 35x pocket only appears on the last two islands.

The sixth island

The game files contain a sixth island called DevIsland. The Thunderstore mod Dev Island Unlocked describes it as already in the game but outside the normal navigation flow, and registers it as a sixth navigable island with a cyan radar marker in the game's own style. The mod page states that the five story islands are neither replaced nor modified, and that the cyan dot follows the same rule as the rest of the radar, appearing only while the boat radar is active. Players also reach it by editing a save file, covered on secret developer island.

Patch 1.0.11 (1 September 2026) says the developers slightly moved the roulette table on island 6 because it was awkward to bet from that position. That is official wording, but Dazed Games have not published how they number islands internally, so which island the line means is not confirmed yet.

Fish per island

The most useful correction in the community guides is that the lure decides what you catch, not the island you stand on. That changes how you plan the collection achievements: you can finish them from island 5 alone, because every bait is sold there.

Lure or bait	First reliably available	Example catches
Free bait, crab rod	Island 1	Brown crab, shrimp, mackerel, gar, pike
Beginner lure	Island 2	Cod, goby, perch, triggerfish, goldfish, pike
Standard lure	Island 3	Salmon, catfish, clownfish, sea urchin, needlefish, seahorse
Professional lure	Island 4	Bass, eel, red snapper, halibut, tigerfish, parrotfish
Scientific lure	Island 5	Blobfish, oarfish, anglerfish, stonefish, superdwarf fish

One disagreement worth flagging: the 49-creature fish list puts Salmon on the Standard Lure, while the Bait and Fish Guide and the Lure Guide both file it under the Beginner Lure, so try the cheaper bait first before paying for a standard one.

Drip creatures use the same bait as their normal versions, at a player-reported 10% chance on eligible non-boss catches. Full species list on fish, every lure on bait, the early money loop on guide.

Sources and last check

Checked 2 September 2026. The official facts come from Dazed Games patch notes on Steam: 1.0.11 (1 September 2026) for the moved island 6 roulette table; 1.0.5 (22 August 2026) for the fix that stopped players sailing to islands they had not yet unlocked; 1.0.4 (21 August 2026) for the clearer path to the final island. DevIsland sitting outside normal navigation, the five story islands being left untouched and the radar-linked cyan marker all come from the Dev Island Unlocked package description on Thunderstore.

Everything else is player-reported, not official: the island names, the travel chain, all prices, shop stock, quest steps and the roulette detail come from the Steam Community guides "All 28 Achievements and Post-Game Route", "Updated Bean Achievement Guide, v1.05 Sub-1-Hour Speedrun" and "The Ultimate Guide to Unlocking All Achievements", plus the bait and lure guides "ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS", "Bait and Fish Guide" and "Lure Guide", and the "Complete Boss and Weapon Strategy Guide" for the melee and weapon notes. Prices are mostly from multiplayer runs and may differ solo. Where guides contradict each other, on the pistol, on the Giant Piranha's drop and on which lure catches Salmon, both readings are named above rather than resolved.