Stardew Valley - Tackle and Bait

Bait makes fish bite sooner, and tackle changes how the catch behaves. Both attach to a rod good enough to hold them.

Overview

Everything in this branch clips onto the end of a fishing line, and between them these attachments do more for a morning at the water than any amount of practice at the minigame. Bait goes in the first slot and governs how long a cast takes to produce a bite. Tackle goes in the second and bends the minigame itself, widening the green block, slowing the escape, holding onto the catch or lifting the grade of whatever comes up. The rod decides how many of those slots exist, and from the sixth fishing level onwards both are available.

The two halves behave differently once attached. A piece of bait is spent on every cast, so it is bought and crafted by the hundred and the running cost is part of the day. A tackle lasts for twenty bites and then vanishes, and seaweed, algae, jelly and rubbish leave it untouched, so a tackle used in a weedy pond lasts far longer than the count suggests. Tackle does not stack in the bag either, so a serious trip fills slots with spares.

Willy's shop at the beach carries most of the branch, with each item appearing on the shelf as the fishing level climbs, and nearly all of it can be crafted instead from recipes earned at the same levels. Three pieces of the branch sit outside that pattern. The Quality Bobber comes from Willy's gratitude after a special order and from a puzzle on Ginger Island. The Curiosity Lure comes off mummies and out of containers deep underground. Magic bait, the strangest of them, is bought with Qi gems in his walnut room.

Groups

Baits split into the ordinary and the specialised. Plain bait cuts the wait for a bite in half and makes rubbish less likely. Deluxe bait cuts it by two thirds and widens the block a little on top. Wild bait, taught by Linus himself once friendship reaches four hearts, trims the wait further and gives a real chance of two fish on one cast. Challenge bait, earned by mastering the skill, can bring up three at once, though the count drops each time the fish slips out of the bar, so only a flawless catch pays the full three. Targeted bait is made from a fish rather than from Bug Meat and raises the odds of hooking that same species. Magic bait ignores the clock, the calendar and the weather together, and a magnet doubles the chance of a Treasure Chest appearing.

Tackles split by what they fix. Two of them speed up bites, the spinner by a few seconds and the Dressed Spinner by twice that. Two make the block easier to hold the fish in, the Cork Bobber by widening it and the Lead Bobber by stopping it bouncing off the bottom of the bar. The Trap Bobber slows the progress bar's fall while the fish is loose, and the Barbed Hook makes the block follow the fish on its own. The Treasure Hunter stops a catch escaping while a chest is being collected and improves the odds of one appearing. The Quality Bobber lifts the grade of the fish, the Sonar Bobber names the fish before it is landed, and the Curiosity Lure raises every rare fish's chance of being the one that bites.

Order

The branch opens at the second fishing level, when plain bait appears on the shelf at five gold apiece and the recipe arrives at the same moment. One piece of Bug Meat makes five, and Bug Meat is something a farmer already has too much of, so the running cost of this stage is effectively nothing. A Worm Bin on the farm makes the point moot by producing bait on its own every day.

The fourth level brings Deluxe Bait, which is the first upgrade worth paying for, and the recipe takes five plain bait and two moss. A Deluxe Worm Bin produces it without the kitchen.

The sixth level is where the branch really begins, because it opens the tackle slot on the rod and puts the spinner, the Trap Bobber, the Sonar Bobber and the Lead Bobber on sale on the same day. The seventh adds the Cork Bobber and the Treasure Hunter, the eighth the Barbed Hook and the Dressed Spinner, and the ninth the magnet. Winning the winter ice-fishing contest for the first time hands over a Barbed Hook, a Dressed Spinner and a magnet together, which is the one shortcut past several of those levels.

Everything else comes from somewhere other than the shop: the Quality Bobber from the special order about bugs, Magic Bait from the walnut room on the island, Challenge Bait from fishing mastery, and the Curiosity Lure from luck in the Skull Cavern or the Quarry Mine.

Best

For a farmer who wants more fish in the bag, the Trap Bobber is the pick. It makes the progress bar fall a third slower whenever the fish is outside the block, and that is the single stat that decides whether a difficult catch is landed or lost. Two of them on the advanced rod slow it by half instead.

For a farmer who wants better fish, the Quality Bobber has no rival. It lifts every catch one grade, and two of them lift it two grades, which together with a perfect catch is how a lake becomes a supply of iridium-quality fish. Nothing else in the game raises grades on the line.

Among the baits, Deluxe Bait is the honest everyday choice, since the shorter wait and the slightly wider block help on every cast with no thought required. Magic bait is the specialist's answer and quietly the most powerful thing in the branch: with it a single pond yields its whole fish list on one afternoon in any season, which turns a long collection into a short one.

The Treasure Hunter and the Dressed Spinner are the next tier, both useful and neither decisive. The Lead Bobber and the Barbed Hook are the ones most often skipped, because a farmer who has learned the timing of the bar does not need either, and the Barbed Hook works against the quick fish where help matters most.

Uses

Crab pots take bait as well as rods, and they need it to catch anything unless the farmer has taken the Luremaster profession. Deluxe bait does two jobs in a pot: it cuts the rubbish rate and raises what comes up to silver grade. Wild bait in a pot gives a quarter chance of doubling the haul. The other specialised baits can be dropped into a pot, where they behave exactly like the plain kind, since nothing in a pot cares about season, weather or treasure.

A Bait Maker turns the branch into a loop. One fish of any kind put into it comes back as five to ten pieces of bait aimed at that species, finished by the next ten-minute tick of the clock, and Willy's shop sells the same Targeted Bait for twice the fish's own price. For a farmer chasing one particular catch, feeding the first one caught back into the machine is the cheapest way to find the rest.

Prices

The shop prices rise steeply with the fishing level: five gold for plain bait, a hundred for deluxe, two hundred for the Lead Bobber, five hundred for the spinner, the Trap Bobber and the Sonar Bobber, seven hundred and fifty for the Cork Bobber and the Treasure Hunter, and a thousand for the Barbed Hook, the Dressed Spinner and the magnet. Crafting is almost always cheaper, since the recipes ask for a bar or two and materials a farm already has, and the travelling cart charges well above the shop for the same items. Selling any of it back is poor business, since a tackle in the bag earns its few hundred gold again in one trip.

Strategy

Match the attachment to the water rather than keeping one combination all year. A river full of difficult fish wants the Trap Bobber, a lake being farmed for money wants the Quality Bobber, and a trip after treasure wants the magnet and the Treasure Hunter together.

Chase the preserving enchantment at the forge if fishing is going to be a habit. It gives every bite a half chance of sparing the bait and the tackle alike, and on the advanced rod the two tackles are rolled separately, so a pair of expensive bobbers lasts roughly twice as long.

Use Magic Bait deliberately rather than constantly. It is bought with gems and there is never much of it, so it belongs in the casts that matter: a Night Market fish in daylight, a winter catch in Summer, or a rainy-day fish on a clear afternoon.

Notes

Doubling up does nothing for two of the tackles. A second Sonar Bobber adds no information and a second Curiosity Lure adds no rarity, so the free slot on the advanced rod is better given to anything else.

Catching several fish on one cast pays experience for one of them, which makes Wild Bait and Challenge Bait worse for levelling than they look. Both do count every fish towards a fishing quest or a special order, so a request for a hundred of something is exactly where they belong.

Challenge bait can bring up three copies of the same legendary fish, and Wild Bait can double the second-generation legends from the Extended Family request, which is the only route to more than one of those fish in a save.

All Tackle and Bait

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Price
Bait		-
Bait (item)		1g
Barbed Hook		500g
Challenge Bait		1g
Cork Bobber		250g
Curiosity Lure		500g
Deluxe Bait		1g
Dressed Spinner		500g
Lead Bobber		150g
Magic Bait		1g
Magnet		15g
Quality Bobber		300g
Sonar Bobber		250g
Spinner		250g
Tackle	-	-
Targeted Bait		0.1 × Fish Price
Trap Bobber		200g
Treasure Hunter		250g
Wild Bait		15g