What platform are you playing on?

Go near water and select the rod, hold the cast button to throw the line. When the fish bites you tap the action button, then with it you will tap and/or hold it to make the bar stay where the fish icon is. That's all there is to it

When I first got this game I had to watch a video tutorial to figure it out. When I first got my girlfriend the game, she had to do the same haha. It’s tricky at first but once you get the hang of it, it’s actually pretty fun. Just take a few days in-game to just try fishing

Do you click rapidly to fish ? I use to tap the button and never catch anything. I then realized that you can hold and let go of the button to stay on target with the fish. Fishing is now one of my favourite past times. Hope this helps

What I did was start a new farmer, river farm, and then for the first four days after meeting Willy I did nothing but walk out my door, stand on the nearest riverbank, and fish.

I did this because I could not understand what the bobber was doing. It was all just a weird blur. Anyway, somewhere around the fourth day it clicked. My eyes adjusted. Something. And fishing became a lot easier when I went back to my actual farmer.

If you have crab pot, I’m pretty sure it counts toward fishing too

Am I the only one who thinks fishing in this game, next to farming and foraging is the easiest? I suck at combat though....

Make sure to max out the fishing bar, it should always be green. Fish either at the mountain lake or beach (beach is easier)...

Use Bait, Linus Bait and tackle...

Tap the button instead of holding it down.

To mention a tip that hasn’t been said yet, crab pots (available after fishing level 3) give 5xp for every time you harvest from it, even if it’s trash. It can be a good small way to get those xp and help level up. The more you can level up the more proficient your fishing gets and it also increases the size of the fishing bar. Did you receive the training rod from Willy? I think you get that in year 1 after a couple seasons if your fishing level is still super low, but you can also buy it from Willy’s shop. It limits the type of fish you can hook/ catch to only the more basic lower difficulty fish, and that’s what really assisted me. I play on switch also. Good luck! I despised fishing in my first run, but on my second it was the skill I maxxed out first.

Go to Willy's and buy trout soup. Food buffs can help you by increasing the bar size. How I fish is on controller, is I stay in the middle and keep pressing the button, don't focus on the fish so much but the staying at the same spot in the bar.

What level fishing are you?

Get the training rod as it will be easier to use until you get the hang of it.
Tap the button, the faster you tap the quicker the little bar will rise.
Carp are relatively easy to catch as they don’t move around that much and they are found in the mountain lake.
Good luck, you’ll do great with lots of practice (which is hard to motivate yourself to do when it’s no fun initially)

Every fish has an approximate pattern and some are easier to catch than others. While you're fishing is at a low level focus on the easier ones the bar won't move very quickly for those. As your fishing level goes up and you get a better fishing pole you'll get a bigger bar so it'll be easier to catch more kinds of fish.

Also look at the available tackle there are ones that make it easier like preventing the bar from bouncing off of the bottom or make the progress bar go down slower when the fish is outside of the green bar.

It's hard with low level fishing and you will lose a lot of fish until you get to a higher level. That will also give you practice and you'll just find you're catching fish you couldn't before. Some fish are just pretty difficult to catch.

Upgrade your fishing rod when you can and use bait. The more you practise and level up the bigger the fishing bar will be.

Like most new things, it's just practice.

But I got frustrated myself and just went the slow, easy way of waiting for the cart lady to have the fish I needed.

Also, there's no rush to complete any particular bundle or quest, so you can focus on just getting a bit of fishing XP here and there, and put off pursuing specific fish until Year 2.

• Think of the button as applying upward force against gravity, rather than as simply "move up".
• Use small repeated taps to make the bar hover or descend slowly.
• When the fish drops to the bottom, bring the bar down slowly so it doesn't bounce as much.
• Once you get crab pots, put a few somewhere you visit often and keep harvesting them and loading them up with bait. You'll get a bit of fishing XP every time.
• Get the better rods and start using bait and tackle once they become available.
• When you see bubbles in the water, try to land your cast there. You'll hook fish faster.
• Use Dish of the Sea or other fishing boost foods, especially when going after a particularly challenging catch. Higher fishing skill makes the green bar bigger, which makes catching easier.
• Practice makes perfect.
• Early on, ignore treasure chests unless the fish is kind enough to hang out right next to the chest. Later, you can practice getting them once you're better at getting catches anyway.

Red snapper is a rainy-day summer ocean fish. It is pretty easy to catch in front of Willy's 6am - 7pm and can be caught in Winter if you can use a rain totem. You may be able to find a red snapper on the traveling cart.

Catfish is also a rainy-day fish and can be caught in Winter if you can use a rain totem, fish in the river by Leah's area for that. If no rain totem you can catch them on rainy days in Spring and Fall in the river or Spring/Summer/Fall in Secret Woods and Witch's Swamp. They are a bit harder to catch.

Sounds like you have the right set up with the iridium rod, deluxe bait, and cork bobber. You should also eat some food to increase fishing.

Make sure you're fishing in the right places at the right times. Check out this page for the details: https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Fish

With the level and rod/bait you're using this fish won't be hard to catch. The issue is likely where you're fishing an when. Both of these fish require rain. The red snapper bites in summer and fall (and technically winter if you make it rain) and is caught in the ocean.

The catfish is caught in the river (town or cindersap both work) during spring and fall.

Red Snapper is any season except spring but only during rain, 6am - 7pm

Catfish is spring/autumn river while raining 6am - 12am, during summer also during rain in secret woods.

Neither catfish nor red snapper are naturally available in winter (the former is spring/fall and the latter summer/fall). However, if you have access to a rain totem to create a rainy day in winter you should be able to hook catfish in the secret woods (anytime before midnight) and red snapper in the ocean (before 7pm).

For catching difficult fish, cork bobber and deluxe bait is a good set up, and if you have access to the iridium rod and cork bobbers you must be at at least fishing level 7, so you presumably have the basic principles of the mini-game down, past that it just takes practice. You also can use fishing buff foods to increase the size of your bar even further; my favorites are fish stew and lobster bisque (recipes from Willy at 7 and 9 hearts respectively) which both give a long-duration +3 to your fishing level and have relatively easy to stock ingredients, and if you don’t have those recipes yet dish o’ the sea is is decent alternative that gives a somewhat shorter +3 buff. (Seafoam pudding gives +4 for the strongest fishing buff in the game, but the ingredients are harder to come by and you don’t get the recipe until fishing level 9 which I don’t know if you’ve reached yet.) If you don’t have your house upgraded to include a kitchen yet you can cook by crafting a cookout kit (recipe obtained at foraging level 3, only costs a bit of wood, fiber, and coal).

It may also be worth trying a trap bobber instead of a cork bobber, which decreases the rate at which you lose fish when they slip off the bar. It’s my personal preference for tough catches, but whether cork or trap bobber is more useful seems to vary a lot from player to player.

I only wish I had more space to put Fish Ponds so that I could fit a whole aquarium on the farm. I had a Four Corners farm that was so fun to use as a kind of collection for each species. The fish quests would get so weird, too! They'd ask for the most random items like Nautilus Shells and Golden Masks.

First skill to hit lvl 10

Nice collection 💜

https://preview.redd.it/v8ku6znlphlf1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=95e44e196e4c47150a5c1cbf43b7d7409fde67fe

Fishing is always the last thing I level up.

Though it did allow me to identify a IRL pike when my nephew caught one, so I guessed I've learned something.

I also love fishing. I try to keep up with other activities in the game but if I pass by a pool of bubbles I will drop everything I have and start fishing. I have also prioritized upgrading my backpack quickly to have more inventory space for fishing 😆 and upgrading my fishing pole.

Edit: the game is overall played two different ways: You either try to work towards finishing the community center (usually takes a minimum of 2 years), which requires you doing a bit of everything, to unlock later content. Or you buy a membership to Joja mart where you instead pay for unlocking the same content as the community center.

I personally like joja mart, since I am primarily fishing or mining (where I instead stress about trying to finish the community center, instead of just enjoying the game).

It is a perfectly valid playstyle that is somewhat effective in the early game.

The only concern is if you are trying to fix the community center you need certain crops, there is a bundle for each season, for example spring needs 1 cauliflower, 1 potato, 1 green bean and 1 parsnip, there is also a quality bundle needing 5 gold variants of a few crops, needing 3 of the follwing, 5 gold parsnips, 5 gold melon, 5 gold corn or 5 gold pimpkin.

Increasing your farming level also unlocks things that are handy for animals and processing the crops you do harvest.

In the mid game crops make more money than fishing does from simply raw output, if you level farming and get certain metals you can make sprinklers to auto water crop, meaning your only effort is planting and harvesting. In my solo save I have like 200-300 blueberries growing in year 1.

Delaying friendship is common as some villagers are annoying to befriend early game, most people like or love certain gifts that you can easily stockpile later on though. For example all but the children, Penny and Sebastian like or love wine so make some kegs, grow some fruit and soon enough most of town will love you, for the few you can't win over with alcohol there is probably a common, easy enough food to get.

For example if you befriend the hobo in the mountains, Linus (likes the majority of foraged items) he teaches you to make sashimi, 3/4 wine haters like it and Sebastian Loves it, all you need to cook it is a upgraded house for the kitchen and anything with the "fish" tag, including the unedible stuff like clams you can forage on the beach,

Personally I focus mostly farming +mines for sprinkler production and fishing for energy+bundles in the first bit of the game. Once my farm is mostly automatic I branch out into befriending people and setting up processing for my crops.

You really can't play a game like this wrong lol, do whatever you enjoy.

Also respect - I only maxed out fishing in year 5 because of how much I HATE the mini game.

The wonderful thing about Stardew Valley is, you can do whatever you want. If you like fishing, you fish. You could play the whole game without planting any crops. It's not required. Of course if you want to do some of the quests, you need crops. But also, you don't need to do any of the quests, if you don't want to. You can upgrade your farm with fish money all you want, or whatever you want to spend your money on. It's such a laid-back game. 😊

/Edit: Have you upgraded your fishing pole at Willy's? When you upgrade your pole and advance your fishing skill, your fishing bar gets bigger. And with an advance pole, you can use tackles and bobbers, which make the fishing easier.

Nope. That's the great thing about stardew, you can do things however you want

Same button you use to cast the line, press it to make the green bar go up, let go to make it go down. Keep the fish in the green, get that green.

Literally as soon as i posted this i figured it out lmao!! just my luck 🤣. however all your advice here has been so useful and i thank all who took time to give a noob advice. this community is so much more wholesome than literally every other one i’ve been in. thanks for the help farmers

Keep trying! The more you fish the better you get

If the key binding is not the issue here, I saw someone explain the mechanics perfectly somewhere in this sub. Think of the green thing like a balloon and you are suppose to blow it to go up or stop to go down. So push and release the button repeatedly according to the green thing instead of holding it.

It's very frustrating to get started. Use the training rod. A lot of fish will just stay at the bottom and you don't need to do anything. Otherwise you use the 'X' button very conservatively. Only if the fish jumps up quickly do you need to hold it down to get your green bar to catch up. Likewise if it darts down quickly you let the green bar fall, but then have to hold X to slow it down until it stays on the fish. With the fish in the green bar, it's just lots of short quick taps of X to keep the green bar steady.

Just think of the green bar like a car - cars don't stop when you take your foot off the gas and neither does the green bar. The longer you hold X, the faster it goes, and the longer it'll take to stop when you let go of X. When it's falling, the faster it falls the longer you need to hold X to "catch it" and bring it to a stop.

That last bit is especially true when the green bar is going to hit the bottom - the faster it drops, the more it'll bounce. So before it hits you have to hold X to catch it and try to time it so it just slides right to a stop at the bottom.

It gets a lot easier as you level up and get the iridium rod - just like in real life you have to practice and learn the skill for it to become easier.

I'm also terrible at fishing 🤣 I got so frustrated with it that I ended up using a fishing mod.

Take your time, constantly tap the button the whole time and then slow down or speed up tapping to have better control. If you see a treasure box move the bobber to the treasure box but make sure you get it before the fish escapes.

Also what level fishing are you? Did you start out with the training rod to gain experience?

the cart lady sells fish sometimes, that’s where i got some of my fish for the bundles

tap the button, don’t hold! holding takes longer for the bar to drop if needed. otherwise, practice makes perfect!!

If you have the iridium rod you're past the point of the training rod helping, unless you want to use it to just eliminate the harder fish so you can practice on easier ones. fishing gets kind of hard in the level 5-8 range I think because you're almost able to catch the harder fish but still not quite there. Every level gives you a slightly bigger catch bar and the trap bobber or cork bobber can help a lot. Just keep practicing. I feel like going for catfish when it's raining is probably the easiest stepping stone to getting better at the mini game and eventually be able to tackle the harder fish at level 8-10.