I wanted to put information out there for people who have questions about fishing in Eco. All of this testing was done by myself on the beta 10.3 server as of 7/17/2024, so I am sure there may be updates and changes, etc. Using the default settings. The hunter skill is available to everyone at the beginning of the game without having to read a skill scroll. It still costs 1 star to unlock, just like all the rest of them.

Skill needed to craft Fish traps, fishery, crab pots, etc.

Fishing options:

1. Fish Traps.
2. Crab Pots.
3. Medium Fishing Trawler.
4. Bow and arrow hunter-fisherman.
5. Urchin and clam hand-fishing.

First I will begin with universal fishing facts not s.pecific to any of the above fishing methods.

Fishing Facts!

• Left CTRL is to dive downwards :)
• You can sprint in water to go faster, it ticks for -30 calories when it does.
• Every ~ 20-30s you take -150 calorie hit while swimming. Whether that's swimming across the surface or going down. So be sure to bring a canoe, or get what you can and get out.
• Swimming over the deep trenches will rapidly drain calories. Avoid unless you have a boat.
• Orange population on the world map is basically the required minimum to catch fish or crabs in traps. If you place a freshwater fish trap in a lake in an ice biome, you won't get anything. If you place it in the river on the edge of the orange zone, only the ones in the orange zone will catch any fish. Seeing them physically in game doesn't matter.
• Having traps packed together or stacked inside each other doesn't interfere with each other (other than going through population faster).
• Fish/Crab/Animal population does go down as you catch them. While solo you can turn a white population crab area down to a purple or blue. From playing solo the population stabilized to the point where I couldn't make it go back to blue and the area recovered to white but just FYI.
• The catch rate will go down if the population on the map goes down, including going to 0 catches/min if it goes low enough. Pictures below are before and after placing 20 crab pots and waiting 10 minutes when the population was new / not built up for crabs.

Left picture is Server start with 0 crab pots. Right is after 15 minutes with 20 crab pots. The crab spawning out-paced my catching soon after though, but just an FYI that this isn't super infinite if you scale it up a ton.

• Fishing yield seems to be around .05-.07 per minute per trap (for Fish Trap and Crab Pot) in a white (maximum) yield zone. If you have 20 traps this is 1-1.45 about per minute from my testing.
• From my solo world experience you don't have to be in render range for catching to happen.
• Sleeping in the bed does not accelerate the amount of fish you catch. Only Work Order stuff.
• Lakes can dry up (from my test with 1 lake). I caught 16 fish in my lake on a new world and never caught any more after that. Picking up and putting traps down again didn't make it work. Killing the rest of the non-Fish Trappable fish didn't work. You may see fish swimming around but only Salmon and Trout can be caught in the Fish Trap. Avoid Lakes imo. Maybe I was just unlucky with mine.
• Fish don't degrade. Consider keep a stock of 50-100 Raw Fish at most, and store the rest of the un-cut fish for later. You can also list the fish themselves for sale, just be sure to only list them at the same profit you would get by making them into raw fish. Or don't sell if you want to 'burn' them for XP!
• Raw fish lasts ~ 4 in game days before spoiling. Dry Fish, Dry meat, and Sweet Jerky all last ~ 6 in game days before spoiling. I say in game because if you are solo you can sleep in a bed to speed up time.

Raw fish is 10 Nutrition (7 protein + 3 fat) and spoils after 4 days. Sweet Deer Jerky has 35 Nutrition and lasts 6 days. If your raw fish is going to expire, either make Dry Fish or Sweet Deer Jerky. Caught Fish last forever.

• Depth doesn't seem to matter for Fish Traps or Crab Pots, I may be wrong on this. Might be optimal to 'fill' a riverbed to being just 1 below the surface in a high yield area so you don't have to dive as far. Or maybe that ruins the suitability for fish so don't do that.
• You don't get XP from catching stuff in Fishing Traps or Crab Pots. So if you just Crab Pot and sell Crabs, you will get 0 XP other than making the crab pot itself.

Open the map [M], World layers, Animal, Aquatic Animals, Population, then select what you are looking for. As you can see this white square is the best place for Freshwater Traps [Salmon and Trout]. Do the same for other resources like Crab or where to Trawl the Ocean.

Fish Traps!

• Fish traps can only be placed underwater in Fresh Water. Otherwise they won't catch anything.
• Fish traps can only catch Salmon and Trout. Look for these densities in river beds.
• You can setup a fishery near Fish Traps (or Crab Pots) and have work orders queued up. This will pull the fish automatically out of the water if they are in range. (AFK auto-fishing method).
• Salmon weigh 1KG while Trout weigh .8KG.

Fish trap hit its limit due to weight despite open slots

• Fish traps have a maximum weight limit of 15KG. Or about 18 Trouts. This means after ~ 6 hours (in the best case scenario of trout only and slower end of white population return rate of .05 per minute) your traps will stop catching fish from being full. So having a fishery auto-pull if you are going to be gone that long is good.

You can also stack fish traps by rotating them 180*. They seem to only 'occupy' 1 square despite having a 2 wide body appearance. Or place them end to end where they overlap. They are likely going to 'fix' this at some point.

Crab Pots!

• Crab Pots must be placed under Salt Water to work.
• Crab pots have a maximum weight of 15KG. They cap out at 7 crabs or about 3 hours ish with a yield rate of .05 crabs per minute in a maximum yield zone.

Its a crab walking on land, they walk sideways

• Crabs are 2x heavier than medium fish, and only give half of the raw fish output. They also suffer from population issues. Crab pots are strictly worse than fishing traps unless you need crabs specifically for some reason.

Crab pots hold 7 at most due to each being 2 KG.

• Crabs also walk on land so you can also bow them down occasionally.
• Crabs can also be used in 2 advanced cooking recipes.

Crab pots placed closely together, they look empty but these are all 7/7 full on the ocean floor

Fishing Trawler!

Fishing tralwer at night. Has the options of honk, turning lights on and off, and raising net up and down. No catching fish with the net in the air!

• Needs burnable fuel (crushed coal, charcoal, wood, hewn logs, etc).

Any fuel with the Burnable Fuel tag will work. Even tallow, wood, charcoal, etc.

• Needs a trawling net. Either a Flax one or a Nylon one. It is attached as a Module in the UI for the Fishing Trawler.

Flax or Nylon net. Both take 1 durability damage per caught fish.

• Nylon and Flax nets do the same thing. Flax has 500 durability, Nylon has 2000.
• Fishing nets take 1 durability loss per catch.
• Nets are repaired using thread. Flax Trawler Net with Linen Yarn, and Nylon Trawler Net with Nylon Thread.
• Fishing Trawlers can only catch:

Cod, Bass, Tuna, Pacific Sardine.

• You catch about 5-7 fish per minute if you stay in a maximum (white) population zone. See Image below for the ratio I got over 10-15 minutes.

Maximum weight of 1400KG for cargo hold (top storage). Maximum weight of 1400KG for net storage (bottom storage). This is also the ratio of fish I caught from my testing I am at 353KG/1400 (including the coal) for the main storage here. The lower storage can only hold Fish.

• If you Trawl over the trench zones there isn't any fish to catch.
• You catch fish every 5-10 seconds, sometimes just one sometimes in 2's.
• You can't hold left or right turn to turn the Trawler. You have to go forwards and turn or backwards and turn.
• You have to hold W to catch fish, and the net must be lowered into the water. This includes going AFK into the beech while driving the boat and alt-tabbed with auto-run [EXPLOIT, probably fixed at some point]. Driving in circles holding W and left for example should also work endlessly.
• Trawler moves at the same speed whether net is up or down.
• Safe for 3 depth water, I didn't have any 2 depth water to test though. (Beech level, 1 below, and 1 below that. Beech level and 1 below would be too shallow I believe).

Pollution isn't to bad while running. Make sure your law makers make it legal at all times to run!

Bow Fishing!

• I didn't test this out too much cause it takes 3 shots with a regular bow to kill a fish and you can't shoot a bow underwater. Might as well hunt regular animals then? You also have to run up to the dead fish in the water to pick them up. Maybe they could do fishing arrows in the future where you can reel them in afterwards?
• Hold left click to keep the bow charged. Release to let go.
• If you left click while holding bow, it goes to max charge before firing. No rapid shooting super short / weak shots. Every shot is max power.
• If you accidentally charge up a shot, switch tools.
• Arrows shot are lost. There is a hunter talent that returns 50% of them that hit animals but that is it.

Fishing Rod!

So the fishing rod is kind of weird. You hold left click, the longer you hold the more you wind-up to a maximum. As you reel fish in [Holding Left Click], the line turns red based on how much they fight. All fish at maximum cast can be reeled in except sharks. Sharks make very little progress when reeling in, and the line 'breaks' giving you nothing. You have to walk it in (see end of this section).

• I didn't test the fish rate too much but I got like 1 fish per 20s or so? With maximum line distance cast. I caught bass, tuna, cod, and my first jellyfish.
• I didn't test this too much, feels clunky to me. I also only tested ocean with the Fishing Rod.

Bober is in water. Line is white. No action on the bober. This is from holding left click (can hold as long as you want) before releasing to cast.

Fish is ready to press and hold Left Click to hook until the fish is in your inventory. This is what the fish looks like when you should start reeling in.

When the fish pull the line turns red. Eventually it snaps. If you walk towards the fish it doesn't get worse. If you walk back away, it pulls the fish closer and the line gets worse but not so bad. If you reel the line get noticeably worse but the fish comes to you. You can catch every fish except for Sharks by just holding Left Click.

• How to catch Sharks. If a shark is on the line you have to not reel in. You walk backwards until it is at the edge of the boat or shore-line. Then you walk up to it. Once you are nearly on-top of it, then you can hold Left Click to reel it in until it is in your inventory. You can reel in while being in the water.

Fishing pole is better than bow fishing from my experiences, but not my jam currently. My fishing pole didn't take durability loss from my testing?

Deep Diving!

• You can manually pick up Clams and Sea Urchins from the ocean floor! Kelp is for gatherers so let them do that imo. You can buy kelp to make into fiber since that is a hunter recipe. Or if you need fiber for yourself you can go this route.
• You can gather about 15 sea urchins (2 per node makes it 30 in inventory) between each 150 calorie hit if they are densely packed. Diving for Sea Urchins and Clams is 'worth' it in terms of cost to return. That is 30 raw fish very quickly and this is the fastest way to gather fish if available. Sea urchin populations are limited.
• You get 2 sea urchins per gathered node.
• Sea urchins also have an advanced cooking recipe.

Red or Blue varieties. I have my settings at ultra but yep. Just press E to gather, no tools needed.

• Clams have a Cooking recipe. Clam chowder is pretty great early game (but you won't get XP for collecting them if you don't shuck them into raw fish).
• Clams are even less common than Sea Urchins.

Clams are smaller and sometimes blend into the grass. Same as sea urchins, no tool needed, press E to gather.

Conclusion!

This is all for fishing for now. Hopefully they make Crabs better, Fishing Traps catch all freshwater fish varieties, a fix for the Trawler being AFK auto-run into beech, and maybe a glass(glass lens) + tailoring option for scuba goggles that reduces swimming costs. (Flippers would be cool as an oil tier product maybe?).

I plan on playing on White Tiger this coming July 19th for the Beta 10.3 test! Let me know if anyone wants more guides. This is Fishing specifically and not the hunter profession or XP optimization as a whole.
[7/18 edit for some clarity and fixes.]

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