Part of the series:

No Man's Sky Creatures & Companions Guide: Hub for pets, breeding, mounts, and discovery.

How to Feed & Milk Creatures: Harvest resources from tamed fauna.

Quick Answer

Fishing requires a Fishing Rig installed on your Multi-Tool, added in the Aquarius update.
Cast into water and wait for three translucent fish to appear near your line.
When the line goes taut, reel in the fish.
Water depth determines fish size: shallow water yields small fish, deep water yields larger ones.
Bait increases the chance of catching larger, rarer, or condition-specific fish.
Caught fish can be cooked, sold, or recorded in your Catalogue.

Overview

Fishing turns No Man's Sky's oceans, lakes, and rivers from scenery into a productive activity. With the right rig and bait, you can catch common snacks, rare trophy fish, and even legendary specimens that sell for serious Units. Fish also feed into the Nutrient Processor for high-quality recipes.

Getting Started

Before you can fish, you need a Fishing Rig. This is a Multi-Tool upgrade that you install like any other technology. A cosmetic variant called the Lost Angler's Rig functions the same way but looks different.

You will also want an Exo-Skiff for a stable fishing platform in deep water, though it is optional. The Automated Trap is another optional tool that passively catches fish over time.

Gear	Required?	What it does for you
Fishing Rig	Required	The Multi-Tool technology that lets you cast at all. The Lost Angler's Rig is a cosmetic alternative with identical function
Bait Box	Effectively required	Holds your bait. Reached from the Multi-Tool inventory or the Quick Menu under Utilities
Exo-Skiff	Optional	A stable platform anywhere on open water, which lets you fish depths no shoreline reaches. Gets unstable in bad weather
Starship with Aqua-Jets	Optional	Lands on water and works as a fixed platform, with the added benefit of somewhere to stow your catch
Automated Trap	Optional	Collects fish passively while you do something else nearby
Hazard protection	Situational	Fishing on toxic, scorched, or irradiated worlds means standing in the hazard for the whole session

The gear you actually need is smaller than the list suggests. A rig and a bait box cover everything, and the platforms only matter once you are chasing colossal fish in water too deep to reach from a beach.

How to Cast and Reel

With the Fishing Rig equipped:

Stand near a body of water.
Cast your line into the water.
Wait for three translucent fish to gather near the line.
One fish will nibble, then the line will change color and go taut.
Reel in at the right moment to catch it.

Reeling too early returns nothing. A brief press bobs the line without reeling, which can help time your catch.

The color change is the signal to watch, not the fish. Translucent fish drifting near the line means nothing has committed yet; the moment the line changes and pulls taut, a fish is on and you reel. Anything you do between those two states either wastes the cast or does nothing.

Common ways a cast goes wrong:

Reeling on the nibble. The approach animation looks like a bite. Wait for the line, not the fish.
Casting into water that is too shallow. No amount of patience turns a shallow cast into a large fish. Move to deeper water instead.
Recasting too often. Every recast throws away the trio you already had, so only do it deliberately when the sizes on offer are wrong.
Fishing with an empty bait box. Bait is the main lever you have over what shows up, and running dry quietly halves your results.

Fish Sizes and Water Depth

Fish come in four sizes: small, medium-sized, large, and colossal. The depth of the water you cast into determines which sizes can appear. The HUD shows the depth of your cast in the bottom-left corner when fishing.

Depth	Likely Sizes	Where you find it
Shallow	Small to medium	Rivers, pond edges, shelving beaches
Moderate	Medium to large	Larger lakes, a short swim out from a coastline
Deep	Large to colossal	Open ocean, steep-sided coastlines, water worlds

If you want trophy fish, find deep water: oceans, large lakes, or deep ponds.

Finding a Good Spot

Position matters more than technique. What you want is deep water you can cast into from dry land, which means a shoreline that drops away steeply rather than a gently shelving beach. Water worlds and lush planets with large oceans supply these readily, and the depth readout tells you within a single cast whether a spot is worth staying at.

Once you find one, mark it. A save beacon or a small base beside productive deep water gives you a destination you can return to, which matters because condition-specific fish will bring you back at different times of day. Players who fish seriously keep one or two known spots instead of hunting for fresh water every session.

The Exo-Skiff exists for water no shoreline reaches. It puts a platform anywhere on the surface, at the cost of becoming unstable when the weather turns. On a storm-prone world that is the same weather that unlocks storm-condition fish, so decide whether you are chasing those species or want a comfortable session before deploying it.

The Three Fish System

The three translucent fish that appear while fishing are not the actual fish; they indicate the possible sizes available at that cast. They can be all the same size or a mix. When mixed, the combination is usually two small and one medium, or two large and one colossal.

If the trio is mixed, the larger fish is always caught. If you want a specific size and the current trio does not show it, recast to generate a new set before any fish nibbles.

That rule turns fishing into a filtering exercise rather than a waiting one. A cast showing three small fish in deep water is a cast to abandon: recast, read the trio, and only commit when the sizes on offer match what you came for. Recasting costs seconds, while landing a fish you did not want costs an inventory slot and the time to sell or discard it.

Because the larger fish always wins in a mixed trio, mixed sets are as good as uniform ones. Two large and one colossal guarantees the colossal, so a trio containing a single colossal is worth as much to a trophy hunter as one showing three. Repeated small-only trios, on the other hand, mean the water is not deep enough and no amount of recasting will fix it.

Bait and Conditions

Bait is added through the Bait Box, accessible from the Multi-Tool inventory or Quick Menu under Utilities. Crafted baits, caught fish, cooking ingredients, and edible products can all be used.

Bait can improve your chances of catching:

Larger fish
Rarer fish
Fish that only appear under certain conditions

Some fish only appear during the day, at night, during storms, or in specific biomes. Check the tooltip when adding bait to see what it targets.

Bait category	What it improves	When to load it
Size-focused	The odds of larger size classes appearing in the trio	Trophy hunting in deep water
Rarity-focused	The chance of uncommon and rare species	Filling gaps in the Fishing Records
Condition-focused	Species tied to a specific time of day or weather	Chasing one particular missing entry
Everyday organics: cooking ingredients, surplus food, small caught fish	A modest general improvement, at no real cost	Casual sessions, and clearing ingredient clutter out of your inventory

Working the Conditions

Condition-locked fish are the entries that stall a collection, and each condition has a way to force it:

Condition	When it applies	How to make it happen
Day	The planet's local daylight hours	Fish during the light, or fly to the lit hemisphere
Night	After dark	Fly to the unlit side of the planet rather than waiting out the day-night cycle
Storm	While a planetary storm is running	Fish on a storm-prone extreme world and wait for the weather warning
Biome	Always, on the matching planet type	Travel to a planet of that type

Flying to the night side is the trick worth internalizing. Waiting for a planet to rotate takes a long real-time stretch, while boosting to the dark hemisphere takes a minute or two and holds you in permanent night for as long as you stay put. The same approach works in reverse for daylight species. The planet types, biomes, and hazards guide covers which worlds get the storms you need for the weather-locked catches.

Biomes and Unique Fish

Most biomes with water have their own unique fish. Lush, Barren, Exotic, Scorched, Toxic, Irradiated, Water Worlds, and Gas Giants each offer distinct species. Volcanic and Marsh biomes do not have unique fish of their own; they share varieties with Scorched and Lush biomes respectively.

Anomalous and Dead planets lack water entirely, so fishing is not possible there.

Biome	Unique fish?	Notes for a collection run
Lush	Yes	Easiest place to start, with plentiful accessible water
Barren	Yes	Water is sparse, so scan from orbit before landing
Exotic	Yes	Worth a detour, since exotic worlds are less commonly fished
Scorched	Yes	Bring hazard protection for the whole session
Toxic	Yes	Bring hazard protection for the whole session
Irradiated	Yes	Bring hazard protection for the whole session
Water world	Yes	Deep water everywhere, which makes these the best colossal-fish grounds
Gas giant	Yes	A distinct set worth the trip once you are completing records
Volcanic	Shares with Scorched	Skip if you have already fished a Scorched world
Marsh	Shares with Lush	Skip if you have already fished a Lush world
Anomalous / Dead	No water	Cannot fish here at all

For a completion run, the two shared biomes are free skips. Fishing a Volcanic world after a Scorched one, or a Marsh world after a Lush one, adds nothing to your records.

Using Your Catch

Fish have several uses:

Sell: Rarer fish sell for more Units at Galactic Trade Terminals.
Cook: Use the Nutrient Processor to turn fish into restorative and valuable dishes.
Catalogue: Your largest catches are recorded in the Fishing Records tab of the Catalogue under Wonders.
Bait: Caught fish can be recycled into the Bait Box to catch even better fish.

Selling raw fish at a Galactic Trade Terminal is the fast option and the worst-paying one. Running the same catch through a Nutrient Processor first turns it into a dish, and finished dishes are worth considerably more than the ingredients that went into them. If Units are the goal, cook before you sell. The cooking and Nutrient Processor guide covers which chains are worth the extra step.

The recycling loop makes long sessions self-sustaining. Small fish you did not want go back into the Bait Box, which improves the odds on later casts, which produces better fish.

One habit worth building: check the Fishing Records tab before a trip, not after. The records track your largest catch per species, so knowing which entries are empty and which are merely small tells you whether you need a new biome, a specific condition, or simply deeper water. Fishing without checking first is how players end up filling their inventory with species they already had.

FAQ

Why am I not catching anything?

Make sure you are casting into deep enough water and waiting for the nibble animation. If the fish disappear, recast. Also confirm you have a Fishing Rig installed, not just a Multi-Tool weapon.

What is the best bait?

Crafted baits tailored to the fish you want are best. For general use, items that boost size and rarity are solid. Experiment based on the tooltip when adding bait.

Can I fish from my starship?

You cannot cast from a flying starship, but landing a starship with Aqua-Jets on water can provide a stable platform. The Exo-Skiff can become unstable in extreme weather.

Do fish sizes affect value?

The size in kilograms is recorded in your Catalogue but does not directly affect value. Rarity is the main driver of price.

Can I fish on any planet?

You need water. Anomalous and Dead planets have no water. If you cannot find water on a planet, try traveling to the opposite side of the globe.

How do I catch a fish that only appears at night?

Fly to the unlit hemisphere rather than waiting for the planet to rotate. You arrive in night conditions within a couple of minutes and stay there as long as you keep fishing that spot. Load condition-focused bait before you cast.

Should I keep small fish or discard them?

Keep them for the Bait Box. Small catches you have no other use for feed straight back into your bait supply and improve the odds on the casts that follow, which is better value than the handful of Units they sell for.

Is the Exo-Skiff worth building?

Only once you are chasing colossal fish. A steep-sided shoreline reaches deep water on most ocean planets, and land is stable in weather that makes the Skiff wobble. Build it when you find yourself repeatedly needing depths that no coastline provides.

Keep Exploring

Cook your catch into valuable meals with the cooking and Nutrient Processor guide.
Release rare fish for currency using the how to get Nanites fast guide.

Key Takeaways

Install a Fishing Rig on your Multi-Tool to start fishing.
Cast into deep water for larger fish.
The three visible fish indicate possible sizes; recast if you want different odds.
Bait improves size, rarity, and condition-specific catches.
Sell, cook, or catalogue your catches.

No Man's Sky Fishing Guide