Fish are caught with a 
Fishing Rod: you cast a bobber onto water, wait for a bite,
and strike the moment the bobber goes under. What you catch depends on the kind of water and on how
deep it is under the bobber; how fast fish bite depends on the depth, the hour and the season.
The fishing rod
2 
2 
The rod is made by hand (or at the workbench) from 2 Stick, 2
Plant Twine and a Flint Shard. It lasts 64 uses, and it only wears
when a fish is landed: a cast that brings nothing back costs nothing.
There is no bait, hook, net or trap in the game: the rod alone is all the tackle.
Casting and striking
- Take the rod in hand and look at the water.
- Press the use button (the right mouse button). The bobber flies along your view, falls in an arc and floats on the first water it meets. On dry ground it just lies there, and nothing bites.
- Wait. When a fish bites, the bobber goes under.
- Press the right mouse button again within 1.2 seconds: the fish is hooked and goes straight into your inventory (at your feet if it is full).
Timing matters:
- Too soon (before the bite), the line comes back empty.
- Too late, the fish lets go, the bobber comes back up and a new wait begins: you can still strike the next bite without casting again.
The line is reeled in by itself when the rod leaves your hand, when you go more than 24 metres from the bobber, when you die or leave, and when the water under the bobber disappears. A bobber that flies for 4 seconds without landing anywhere is reeled in too.
When fish bite
Once the bobber floats, a wait between 8 and 30 seconds is drawn, then divided by the bite rate. The rate is the product of three factors:
| Water under the bobber | Factor |
|---|---|
| 1 block deep | 0.6 |
| 2 or 3 blocks | 1 |
| 4 to 7 blocks | 1.25 |
| 8 blocks or more | 1.4 |
| Time of day | Factor |
|---|---|
| Dawn and dusk | 1.6 |
| Night | 1 |
| Day | 0.8 |
| Season | Factor |
|---|---|
| Spring | 1.2 |
| Autumn | 1.1 |
| Summer | 1 |
| Winter | 0.4 |
So fish keep to deep water and take best at twilight. A deep pool at dusk in spring (rate 2.7) bites within 3 to 11 seconds; a shallow puddle at noon in winter (rate 0.19) can take more than two minutes. These waits are real seconds. See Seasons and weather for the calendar.
Where each fish lives
The kind of water is read from the world’s map of waters: a lake, a river, the coast, or the open sea (a place with sea on every side for some distance). A small pond the map does not know counts as a lake. Each water holds its own fish, drawn by weight among those the depth allows:
| Water | Fish (weight, depth needed) |
|---|---|
| Lake |  Raw Carp (3),  Raw Trout (1),  Raw Pike (1, 2 blocks or more) |
| River | Raw Trout (3), Raw Pike (1, 2 blocks or more) |
| Coast |  Raw Herring (3),  Raw Cod (1, 3 blocks or more) |
| Open sea | Raw Herring (2), Raw Cod (2, 2 blocks or more) |
In practice:
- Carp is the common catch of still lakes (3 in 5 bites in a lake 2 blocks deep).
- Trout is the river fish (3 in 4 bites in a deep river, every bite in a shallow one).
- Pike lives in rivers and lakes but never bites in water a single block deep.
- Herring fills the coasts and the sea.
- Cod wants deep salt water: 3 blocks along the coast, 2 in the open sea, where it bites as often as herring.
The fish you see swimming in the waters are creatures of their own and drop nothing when killed: the catch only comes from the rod.
What to do with the catch
Raw fish spoils after 1.5 days, so cook it or preserve it soon. Every raw fish counts as fish in the recipes below (trout is shown as an example). See Food and preservation and Fire stations.
Cooking
Campfire - Time
- ⏱ 30 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 150 °C
Cooking Pot - Time
- ⏱ 60 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 100 °C
Poaching in the cooking pot turns 2 fish and an 
Onion into 3 cooked fish.
Cooked Fish heals 4 and gives 100 seconds of Nourished, but keeps only 2 days.
Preserving
Salting Tub 
- Time
- ⏱ 15 minutes
Smokehouse - Time
- ⏱ 15 minutes
- Temperature
- 🌡 40 °C
| Food | Keeps | Heals | Effects |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cooked Fish | 2 days | 4 | Nourished 100 s |
 Salted Fish | 60 days | 3 | Nourished 90 s |
 Smoked Fish | 40 days | 4 | Nourished 120 s, Sated 240 s |
Salted fish keeps the longest; smoked fish feeds the best.