Targeted Bait
| Targeted Bait | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Tackle |
| Location | Bait Maker; Fish Shop |
| Sell Price | 0.1 × Fish Price |
Targeted Bait is not one item but a whole family of them, one for every fish in the valley. Feeding a Catfish into a Bait Maker produces Catfish Bait; feeding in a Sardine produces Sardine Bait. On the rod, the named fish becomes far more likely to take the hook than anything else in the water. It is the answer to the quest that wants five Lingcod, the collection slot that has stayed empty for two years, and the Fish Pond that needs one more of a species to start breeding. It also works in Crab Pots, where it can turn a line of traps into a Lobster farm. The catch is that the fish must still be able to appear where and when the line goes in.
Use
The bait leans on the hook roll twice. First it raises the targeted fish's chance of passing its own spawn check by about two thirds, and that check normally has a ceiling, so a fish that could only ever manage a nine-in-ten roll becomes a certainty. Second, the game widens its search: instead of taking the first fish that passes its checks, it looks at the first three candidates, and if the target is among them the target is hooked. Together those two effects make the named fish the overwhelming favourite in most water.
Season, time of day and weather still apply. Making bait for a daytime river fish and then casting at midnight gets nothing but rubbish, because the conditions rule the fish out before the bait gets a say. Worse, the way the search works means the wasted casts come up as trash far more often than usual, so using the wrong bait for the conditions is actively harmful rather than merely useless. Checking the fish's own window before making the bait is the habit that saves a morning.
Fish bite at plain Bait's pace with Targeted Bait on the line, so it buys precision and not speed.
Crab Pots respond to it as well, provided the Mariner profession has not been taken. Lobster Bait quadruples the Lobster chance, while Clam, Crab and Oyster baits triple theirs and the rest double. A beach lined with pots and loaded with Lobster Bait becomes a reliable supply of the most valuable shellfish in the game.
Upgrades
A Bait Maker is the machine behind it. Any fish dropped inside comes back as five to ten pieces of that fish's bait, and the batch is finished as soon as the clock ticks over to the next ten minute mark, which is quick enough to make a batch between casts. The fish has to be in hand first, so targeting a species means catching one of it beforehand. Buying an unfamiliar fish from the Traveling Cart is the usual way round that.
Willy also sells it ready-made. The Fish Shop carries a limited daily run of one kind, priced at double the bait's own value, and the kind on the shelf changes with the season. Spring brings river and shore baits such as Anchovy, Bream and Flounder; summer runs to Pufferfish, Tuna, Rainbow Trout and Octopus; Fall adds Salmon, Midnight Carp and Albacore; winter is the broadest list of all, with Walleye, Perch, Squid and Lingcod among the stock.
Notes
The effect on the hardest fish in the game is smaller than it looks but still real. The Legendary Fish and their second-generation counterparts ignore the spawn check altogether and are always tried first, so the extra search does little for them, but the bait still multiplies their hook chance by roughly two thirds again. Making Crimsonfish Bait from a Crimsonfish already caught does not permit a second unique catch, although it helps enormously with the Extended Family versions.
The fish that live in the mines sit outside the normal system and get a flat bonus instead: Stonefish gains the most, Ice Pip a little less, Lava Eel less again. The Goby, which lives in the waterfalls, gains a flat bonus to its locational chance rather than a multiplier.
The festivals are where Targeted Bait shines brightest. Running the first day's catch through a Bait Maker during the Trout Derby or SquidFest stocks the rod with exactly the right bait for the second day, which is the cheapest route to the top prize tiers.
Each piece sells for a tenth of the fish that made it, so turning fish into bait and selling the bait is always a loss. The Bait Maker is a tool for catching, not for trading.
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 |