Baits, Lure, and Locations

In my previous post I had mentioned fishing requiring different baits or lures. Very much like in real life different fish and locations require different baits. Dare I say, unlike real life the catch rate is much higher!

When you start fishing you unlock the Fishing Log.

Here you will see the list of all the locations and at the very least the number of fish available in each location. All locations will be labeled as “Undiscovered” until you fish at least one fish from the location.

All fish will appear as a generic fish icon with a question mark until caught. Legendary fish, or fish that will take more than average time and effort, will appear as a glowing pink icon instead of blue.

Inside the fishing log in the lower left side you have two buttons. One takes you to your fishing guide and the other your records. The guide is a book of all the fish. Each page has a blurb on the “fish” (some of what you catch can be plants, turtles, flying biomes, etc. I will refer to all of them as “fish for simplicity) Unfortunately this blurb does not tell you if you need fresh or saltwater bait or which bait the fish prefers.

The records simply shows your record catch for each type of area. It is not tied to any rewards in the game and is just there for added flair.

Figuring out Bait and Lures

Bait is a one-time-use item that you will want to buy in bulk. Most of them can be bought off vendors for cheap while a few end game baits require an alternative currency. Lures are an item you can use as many times as needed. Although I keep at least 4-5 on me as you have the rare chance of “The fish broke your line!” message that will result in losing your lure.

These are the baits and lures that I have on-hand. They take up a lot of space and there is no special place to store them. With Stormblood (4.0) we did get inventory expansion!

One way to figure out what bait/lure you need is to use context clues. If I cast my line in a river I will probably need freshwater bait. If I cast my line off the beach I will probably need saltwater bait. There is neither bait or lure in the game that works in both types of locations.

Using Eastern Thanalan: The Burning Wall as an example we can see the level of the location. We also know we are fishing in a river. Using both level and location we can assume using a bait/lure in the level 35-50 range will likely catch us a fish. If your goal is to simply discover all the locations and you aren’t ready to fish all the fish then this is all the information you need!

If you are aiming to fish all the fish I recommend using Cat Became Hungry It’s a Japanese site. The comments are a mixed bag of languages, but all important information can be changed to one of a few available languages using the button in the top right corner of their banner.

To continue our example I have pulled up the guide for The Burning Wall. The top half has general information along with a simple list of the fish you can catch.

The bottom half goes into detail showing you what fish likes what bait. In general, the higher level the bait the more fish will like it.

Hovering your mouse over any of the fishing icons tells you the percentage chance you have of catching that fish. All this information is crowd sourced and is not 100% accurate.

Clicking on any of the fish will take you to its own page. Here I’ve clicked on the fishable minion gigantpole. We are shown its level, the patch it was added, its location, the in-game flavor text, and the times it was caught. All times are ET, or Eorzean Time. Each Eorzean minute roughly equals 4-5 seconds. It takes roughly 65 minutes for the game to cycle through 24 hours.

On the bottom half we are shown weather, bait, and comments. The weather shown is not all the weather options in game, but rather those that happen on this specific map. I will get into weather in a future post. The bait/lure shown is exclusively the Topwater Frog. You can not catch the gigantpole with any other bait/lure.

If we go back to the page for The Burning Wall we can see the gigantpole shares this lure with seven other fish.

“Seven, but I count eight!” You’re right. At the very end we can see what looks like a bottle. If you are familiar with the game you know about treasure maps. Those maps are found via all gathering classes. These are neato, but have nothing to do with fishing itself besides being an item you can catch.

That about wraps up Baits, Lure, and Locations! Join me next time for Weathering the Weather!

I will go into more detail on each location for future updates. Feel free to ask any questions!