Seasons, weather and fishing water

A weight is not a catch percentage

A species must first pass its biome, fresh or salt water, depth, time and fishing reach requirements. Lures, seasons, weather, moon activity, schooling boils and local stock then change the relative weights of eligible fish. The draw uses the whole catch pool, so doubling one fish’s weight does not promise twice the final catch percentage. Ordinary Adventure fishing also includes non-fish catches with their own fixed weights. On the local line, an active Angler lesson with an empty fishing journal can also filter the pool for starter tackle.

Peak seasons and four seasonal legends

The fish pages list their exact seasonal rules. A tagged fish has 1.6 times seasonal weight in its peak season, normal seasonal weight in its other listed seasons and 0.35 times weight outside them. The Golden One is restricted to Spring, Bogmother to Summer, Dawnbreaker Trout to Autumn and Moonrise Phantom to Winter. Those four cannot enter the pool outside their listed seasons. The other five Legendary species have no seasonal list. Untagged fish receive no seasonal weight change. Habitat, time and reach still matter.

Read the weather pages

Weather can change several groups at once. Predators for fishing weather use Aggressive, Surging or Erratic fight patterns. Surface feeders use Passive or Steady. Rare-group effects include Rare, Epic and Legendary fish. For example, rain gives every fish 1.15 times weight and surface feeders another 1.4 times, making 1.61 before other modifiers. Fog gives the rare group 1.6 times weight and Common fish 0.6 times. These are selection effects, not changes to the fish’s fight. Each weather page lists its exact weight and waiting-time effects.

Dawn, Dusk and Evening

Fishing treats the visible Dawn label as dawn, Dusk and Evening as dusk, and the night watches as night. Dawn, Dusk and Evening shorten the fish bite wait by 1 turn. Cloudy, Overcast, Drizzle or Rain adds another turn off during those windows. Other daytime labels add 1 turn to the wait in Clear weather or Heat Haze. These time-window changes are separate from each weather’s own bite effect.

Moon phases and the Bite reading

Open Fishing Journal and read Bite in the Angler’s Almanac. The bands are Slow at scores 0 through 29, Fair at 30 through 54, Good at 55 through 77 and Prime at 78 through 100. Good takes 1 turn off the bite wait and gives Rare or higher fish 1.1 times weight. Prime takes 2 turns off and gives them 1.25 times weight. Slow and Fair add neither bonus. An eight-day moon cycle supplies up to 60 score points and a separate three-day pressure cycle supplies up to 40. New and Full Moon have the strongest moon contribution, but pressure means a phase alone does not fix the reading. The phases run New Moon, Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, Waxing Gibbous, Full Moon, Waning Gibbous, Last Quarter and Waning Crescent.

Fishing a schooling boil

An active boil affects a six by six world square for the current 140-turn window. Its position and active state can change in the next window. A fish counts as schooling if it uses the small-fish sprite or is Common with a Passive or Steady fight pattern. Schooling fish gain 2.2 times selection weight in the boil before the combined boost limit. Any fish in that cast also gets 2 turns off its bite wait. The visible ripple marks one water tile, while the bonus covers the active square’s water.

Resting a fishing spot

Stock is shared across each twelve by twelve world square, including separate pools inside the same square. Untouched squares start full. A stock-reducing catch removes 15 percentage points, with a floor of 15%. Stock regrows by 0.04 percentage points per elapsed world turn. From the floor, reaching full stock takes 2,125 turns without another reducing catch, a little over one ordinary Adventure day. The stock bands are rested and rich at 90% or more, healthy from 35% to below 90%, and fished thin below 35%. The exact 35% boundary is healthy.

What stock changes

Every eligible fish’s weight is multiplied by stock. Rare, Epic and Legendary fish also gain 1.3 times weight in rested and rich water, or use 0.15 times weight in fished-thin water. Thin water adds 3 turns to the fish bite wait. Before the stock multiplication, the combined seasonal, weather, moon, boil and extra rare-stock factor is capped at 4. An eligible fish’s final weight is at least 0.05. These floors do not bypass the four seasonal Legendary exclusions or other eligibility gates. Rested and rich water also favours larger fish by keeping the larger of two size rolls. Other water keeps the smaller roll.

Quick catches and stock

A fish landed after reeling reduces stock at an overworld cast target or at the ship’s position for deck fishing. An escaped fish and a non-fish catch do not reduce it. In the current build, a fish that comes in without any reeling skips stock reduction in single player and on the host’s own line. A guest’s host-resolved line reduces stock for both quick and reeled fish. This difference does not remove the fish or its journal credit.

Outdoor, indoor and deck casts

Outdoor casts use weather, stock and boils at the cast target. Ship-deck casts use the ship’s real position at sea for those inputs. Indoor casts use Clear weather, full stock and no boil. Seasons and moon activity still apply indoors. In Fishing Journal, This water reads the square where you stand in the overworld, while a cast reads its landing place. The two can differ when the line crosses a stock-square boundary.

Waiting time and The Wilds

The ordinary fish wait starts at 3 through 8 turns. Rod, lure and Living Waters bite bonuses shorten it, with a minimum of 1 turn. Non-fish catches use a separate 1 through 3 turn wait. The Wilds uses its local climate season for fish selection and makes the local wait longer: the greater of 50 turns or 15 times the ordinary wait, doubled during winter conditions. Its Fishing Journal seasonal line currently follows the ordinary Adventure calendar, so it can disagree with the climate used by a Wilds cast.