Sea Fishing Woes

[QuQuasar]

I've been trying to obtain a set of scorching sunfish and ice bream for my solo Wurt world. It... has not been going well.

The biggest pain in the butt is waiting for the fish to spawn. The wiki says "15-60 seconds" between spawns, which I have to assume is horrendously inaccurate assuming there's not some other requirement for them to spawn that I'm missing. 60 seconds is 2 segments at most, but it seems like I end up sitting around in the swell ocean for 4-5 segments on average waiting for spawns. I've been changing locations after every spawn thinking it might be a 'proximity to existing shoals' type of situation, but that doesn't seem to have helped.

After that, you've got to get the fish to take the bait. I've been using spoons mostly, and dropping the lure straight on their heads, but the sunfish mostly just pay brief attention to it before moving on. So I spend days chasing the shoal around the ocean until a gnarwail or squid shows up and eats them all.

I've found ice bream to be easier to catch, but it still takes days on the water before a shoal spawns. And that's assuming I get lucky.

What am I doing wrong here?

[HowlVoid]

I only recently found out this item exists but doesn't fish bait increase spawning rate?

As for the fish not biting... I usually slowly reel the rod as moving the bobber increases "allure".

[lakhnish]

Try sailing several screens back and forth on the level of water that these fish spawn at.

I think it makes the fish despawn and make new ones spawn instead since that's what I always do, but don't quotr me on that.

For the bait, use the ones that require beefalo wool and if you have it, use the stupefying bait. The stupefying bait is the best bait imo since it attracts every fish and although it takes a little longer for a fish to bit it compared to the beefalo wool one, once hooked, it makes the fish easier to catch.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

we need a fish record, i always forge where i find the fish

[Hornete]

36 minutes ago, QuQuasar said:

After that, you've got to get the fish to take the bait. I've been using spoons mostly, and dropping the lure straight on their heads, but the sunfish mostly just pay brief attention to it before moving on.

Are you reeling? When ocean fishing, reeling with reusable lures increases their charm(for spoons, its a 40% increase on top of the base 40% totalling 80%, the 40% reel charm slowly deteriorates away when the lure is still) It's extremely important to reel to attract the fish and get that bonus charm.

I really like luring the fish near to me by reeling my lure when I notice it's interested in my bait, this way, it'll be close enough when it hooks the lure that you can just, catch it instantly!

 

49 minutes ago, QuQuasar said:

The biggest pain in the butt is waiting for the fish to spawn. The wiki says "15-60 seconds" between spawns, which I have to assume is horrendously inaccurate assuming there's not some other requirement for them to spawn that I'm missing. 60 seconds is 2 segments at most, but it seems like I end up sitting around in the swell ocean for 4-5 segments on average waiting for spawns. I've been changing locations after every spawn thinking it might be a 'proximity to existing shoals' type of situation, but that doesn't seem to have helped.

So the wiki's technically correct here, but i'm assuming it fails to mention the multiple checks the game does before determining whether or not it'll actually spawn a fish school, so let's delve into it!

So the 15-60 seconds timer runs for every player, and once it reaches the end, it does a few checks.

Whenever a fish school spawns, a invisible entity named "fishschoolspawnblocker" is also spawned, when determining whether or not to spawn a fish school, it counts how many there are in a radius of 30 units around the player(One unit = one wall)

If there's 0 blockers, then there's a 100% chance for this check to pass, if there's 1 blocker, then there's a 67% chance for this check to pass, if there's 2 blockers, then there's a 34% chance for this check to pass, and if there's 3 or more, it's a 0% chance!

If that check passes, then there's two more checks, First there can not be more than 5 ocean fish in a 30 unit radius, and if there is less than 5, then this check will run.

--r is a random decimal value between 0 and 1, it could be 0.234324, 0.76567, or 0.45. it's random everytime this check is run
--num_fish is how many fish there are in a 30 unit radius around the player
--percent_ocean is the percentange of the ocean, in the games code 0-100% is 0-1 (0.5 is 50%) you're probably in the middle of the ocean, so you can just assume this'll be a value of 1

(r < (1/(num_fish + 1))*percent_ocean)

--Let's assume there's two fish when this check runs, (1/(2 + 1))*1) that would make this
(r < 0.33)
--Which means the random value will need to be under 0.33 (essentially a 33% chance) for this check to pass

--To make things simpler, the more fish the less chance for this check to pass, lol. I just like giving the specifics :>

Something REALLY important to note about the "fishschoolspawnblocker" entities, they aren't "tied" to the fish school they spawn with. as in, if you fish out all the fish of a school, the fishschoolspawnblocker entity that spawned with it still stays in it's current position. Instead the fishschoolspawnblocker entity just removes itself on its own after one day.

So, essentially what you should do is, move around a lot! If you move a few screens every now and then the game will be able to spawn more schools of fish at much higher chances. If you do that, you should be able to get some sunfish in no-time.

 

 

 

[QuQuasar]

I found this guide by Electroely, which helped me diagnose my 'fish not biting' issue:

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/117842-a-fishermans-unnecessarily-detailed-guide-to-fishing-fish-and-wobsters/

Long story short, I need to reel the lure in a little while ever they show interest. Specifically, I need to try to be reeling it at the exact moment they turn around to re-approach the bait. This gif really helped me: 

 

3 minutes ago, Hornete said:

So the wiki's technically correct here, but i'm assuming it fails to mention the multiple checks the game does before determining whether or not it'll actually spawn a fish school, so let's delve into it!

Sweeeeetttt. This is exactly what I was hoping for! Reading it now. 

[QuQuasar]

30 walls = 7.5 tiles. More than twice the radius of the ice flingomatic. That's quite a large area covered by the school blockers: even an Above Average Tree only has a radius of 5 tiles.

So the best method to maximize random fish spawns would be to make note of where the school spawned, move my boat until both that spot and all the fish are off screen and then move a bit further than that (another 1/3rd of a screen should be safe). I should avoiding moving backwards or going over ground I've already covered, since both fish and spawn blockers will be trailing behind me. Finding a long runway of swell ocean would be optimal, since if I don't get lucky with the spawns I could end up travelling dozens of screens per day.

[Friendly Grass]

11 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

The biggest pain in the butt is waiting for the fish to spawn.

I like to turn up fish schools in world settings.