Pao Pao Fishing Guide: Every Fish, Bait and Fishing Spot

Fishing keeps your kitchen stocked, and most of the work happens before you cast. The spot you pick decides which fish can bite, your rod decides which of them you can actually reel in, and Croc’s bait shop lets you stack the odds. Grab the Beginner’s Fishing Rod from Nancy’s quest The Fastest Mail in Town, then use the tables below to plan each trip. Your catch feeds the dishes in the recipes guide.

How Fishing Works

Take the fishing rod from your tool wheel, walk up to a fishing spot or get into a boat, and press Fish to get ready. Press Bait to pick a bait if you have one, then Cast.

1. Wait for a bite. Each fish takes its own time to start biting, listed in the fight table below.
2. Hook it. Press Reel in while the bite lasts. You only get a fraction of a second for the hardest fish. Miss the bite and the fish tries again, but every fish only bites a set number of times before it swims off.
3. Reel it in. Hold Reel in to pull the fish toward you, and steer left and right to keep it in front of you. Your pull is weaker while the fish is off to one side. When the line starts turning red, let go so your rod can recover. Keep reeling and the line snaps.

The fish escapes if it drags the line all the way out or swings too far to the side. If it out-pulls your rod, the game tells you that you need a better rod.

A few things don’t matter, so don’t plan around them. Season, weather and time of day never change what bites, and neither does how far you cast. Each cast uses up one bait, even if the fish gets away.

Which Rod You Need

Every fish pulls away from you with a fixed strength, and your rod has to pull harder to win. If the fish is stronger than your rod, or exactly as strong, you can’t gain any ground and it always escapes. Better rods also let you reel longer before the line turns red and snaps.

Each rod also lands everything the rods above it can. Reel time is how long you can hold Reel in on a fresh line before it snaps. The tools merchant in the City sells the two upgrades.

Speed Bait halves how hard a fish pulls, and that’s enough for the Beginner’s Fishing Rod to land every fish on this page. Buy it once you reach Fishing skill level 3 if you don’t have the Master’s Fishing Rod yet.

Where to Fish

The City, the Forest and the Village each have their own fishing water. Every body of water has a sign nearby that shows what lives there. The bite chance is the share of bites each catch gets when you fish there without species bait.

City: Tilapia and Catfish Water

One fishing spot uses this table. It’s the best water for Tilapia, the best-paying regular fish, and the only place Boulder Fish bites.

City: Salmon and Halibut Water

The four sea spots around the City share this table. Fish here for Crab, Tuna and Sapphire Jellyfish, which bite nowhere else, and for the trash Rusty buys.

Forest: Halibut and Salmon Water

One fishing spot uses this table. Five fish split most of the bites evenly, so it’s the spot to visit when you need a few of each.

Forest: Carp and Catfish Water

One fishing spot uses this table. It has the best Carp odds in the game and twice the other Forest water’s chance of Princess of the Seas.

Village

One fishing spot uses this table. Salmon takes almost half the bites, and it’s the only place Tentacle Fish bites.

Telescope Bubbles

The Telescope event runs every Monday. While it’s on, visit Milo and look through the telescope to spot bubbles on the water in the bay. Each look reveals one bubbling spot. The bubbles disappear once you land a catch there or the event ends. The event starts showing up after the Scientist’s House is repaired.

A bubbling spot doesn’t hold a single fish. Land what bites there and you pull up a mixed haul of 2 to 4 different things, each picked at random from the list below, with every entry equally likely. Double Catch doubles every amount in the haul.

Any rod can land the haul. It takes 2.8-4.3s to bite, gives you 0.6s to hook it and bites twice before it leaves. A species bait still works at a bubbling spot and almost always replaces the haul with its own fish, so take species bait off before you cast there.

Every Catch

Where It Bites lists each body of water with the bite chance there. Species Bait is the bait that makes that catch bite far more often. Rod Needed is the weakest rod that can reel it in without help from bait.

How Each Fish Fights

Wait for a Bite is how long the float sits before each bite. Time to Hook is how long the bite lasts. Bites Before It Leaves is how many chances you get to hook it.

Trash always bites after 3-6s, gives you 1.5s to hook it and only bites once.

Bait and Lures

Buy bait from Croc, the old fisherman in the City. Croc keeps most of his stock back until you prove yourself. Some baits unlock with restaurant stars and others with your Fishing skill, which improves as you fish. Bait lasts for one cast.

Croc starts with 40 to 59 of each bait, and unlike the market stalls he doesn’t restock on Mondays, so save bait for fish you can’t get any other way. Telescope hauls give you more species bait for free, and the Thrifty perk gives each cast a 50% chance to keep its bait.

There are two kinds. Species bait pushes one fish to the top of the bite table at any spot, even in water where it never lives, so you can catch Bass in the Village or Tuna in the Forest. It’s also a reliable way to farm Tuna or Tilapia for recipes. Effect bait changes the fight itself.

Selling Your Catch

• Fish sells to the fish merchant in the City for 10 to 30 coins.
• Rare fish sells to the resources merchant in the City for 200 to 250 coins.
• Nori sells to the grocery merchant in the City for 5 coins each.
• Trash sells to Rusty for 10 to 17 Shells.

The rare fish are worth the trouble. Boulder Fish and Tentacle Fish sell for 250 coins each. Princess of the Seas and Sapphire Jellyfish sell for 200 coins each. Even the cheapest one is worth more than 6 Tilapia, the best-paying regular fish. Halibut and Pike can’t be sold at all, so keep them for cooking.

Fishing Perks

These perks sit in the Fishing skill tree.