You should definitely test mushroom logs next. It seems like you could make a combined tapper-mushroom log-dehydrator farm to make a ton of money

I don't think you want to use the bait maker for the legendary fish. For the the legend II with a bite rate of 20%, that's boosted to 33.3% giving an extra 13.3% per cast. The cost of the bait is on average (1/7.5)=13.3% per cast, so it's a total wash. Considering that legendary fish take longer to catch you'll actually catch less in the three days with the bait maker, as others have said the wild bait for it's 25%+ chance of a double catch is much better. TLDR: Bait maker is stingy, only breaks even at ~20% i.e. bite rate of legend II with curiosity lure, use wild bait instead.

I love that you give the most useful information up front and even include the useful stuff in a comment. Liked and subscribed.

Nice video. The only thing I disagree with is that I don’t think it would be worth it to use Legend II targeted bait. It doesn’t seem to increase bite rate enough to justify it. Wild bait seems to be the way to go. You have a small chance to get double fish based on daily luck, with a 18.75% chance of double catch if max daily luck and 8.75% with min daily luck. Wild bait is much less costly to craft and will give higher returns on average.

I'm not 100% certain yet, but I have a strong feeling that bait makers do work with crab pots. I ended up getting about 20% crabs on a few hundred crab pots when the numbers would have you expect 8% without Mariner. I'm not a code diver though so I haven't seen the interactions anywhere except for my own gameplay. 🤔 On the other hand! You can definitely now get silver quality crab pot fish with deluxe bait and using it also reduces trash. I wouldn't argue either of those things make a strong case for crab pots, but it's nice to see it's not completely a forgotten option.

@@Leapalot i used the bait maker to get snails for the racoon quest, and though it's not by any means a large pool, i did get 3 snails, from 2 crab pots, over 2 days, so 75% of the time! It could of course be chance, but it did seem to help!

I use crab pots mostly to make crab cakes for the long speed buff. Not worth the profession just for that, and now I'm putting most of my copper into tappers because I'm making a huge mushroom log farm, and am tapping all the trees, so I don't really want to dump my copper into crab traps, anyway.

Yeah, it'd be nice if crab pot profits got a healthy bump. Maybe a new area where they produce profits that are much more reasonable.

Thought crab pots were always designed to give people who hate the fishing minigame another option to get the skill up with minimal pain. Its not supposed to be competitive with actually playing the minigame. At least, that's what i'd been assuming.

Ohh, I didn't think of combining the mushroom logs with them. I made a bunch just to quickly go through batches of cranberries and modded berries, but I hadn't thought of making use of mushroom logs for the same purpose!

@@ahealthkit2745if you can, use the logs with the new tree type. You get purple mushrooms a bunch of the time.

It seems like the mushroom logs are a long-overdue attempt to make tree farming relevant. With the heavy tapper and the new syrup, maybe it'll be enough this time.

The mushroom logs also made pine trees actually worth growing now as well since chanterelles are the best mushroom to grow prior to purple mushrooms which are best harvested using mystic trees. So now even when you don’t need a lot of pine tar it is still useful

@@matthewgladback8905 Just watched a new video about them, best thing you can do w/ the mushroom stumps and the new mystic trees is to place them together in a big 7x7 clump, heavy tap all the trees and you should be getting around 5 purple mushrooms from the logs if they're close enough to the 7x7 space filled w/ mystic trees. w/ the tree tapper forager trait, you get 1250 per mystic syrup.

What's the interaction?

Yeah! Mushroom logs would include discussion around each tree type, since they all affect the output.

@@Leapalot oh, i can't wait to see that video. I don't really understand how they work, but i have a mini forest around 4 logs that i let the moss be on the trees and i sometimes get iridium quality mushrooms.

@@TheDragonQueen-uh4lmDepending on the tree, the log will produce specific mushrooms. Mystic trees are amazing because they make the logs yield only purple mushies. On top of the tap produce the tree makes that sells for 1k.

challenge bait is way better

Yeah! I used it to catch a scorpion carp for the Desert Festival!

Yes this stacks well! I got some Legend roe while testing something else and it sells for 7048 if aged with artisan. 😎

You have to catch a treasure chest too though

It's not too bad as long as you're not going for a perfect catch @@carterklassen405

Mighty 6 legend 2 roe from a single treasure chest. Provides you with straight bank

Ah that's interesting. I would normally prefer master, but that could be a really good option in 1.6!

That's how I discovered Preserving is op. Not only for saving bait, but bobbers too.

I'm not sure on the math yet, but my testing with crab pots and targeted bait has been promising. Like ~20% crabs when I expected 8% for example.

That's awesome! Glad it gave you a new perspective!

That's pretty neat! I'm honestly not knowledgeable enough about trinkets to speak on them yet. But maybe at some point! It would be cool to do a full luck build with two rings, magic rock candy and ginger ale and make a day of it!

Not bad!

A good loop for me is Sturgeoncumber Summer, as sturgeons stop at 7 and Super Cucumbers start at 6. Bait on both, switch at locations. 20 of both solo every day, about 12 on multiplayer.

Fall should be Tiger Trout then super cucumber, not sure on winter honestly but sturgeons reappear

This is my favorite comment on The Citadel.

Definitely possible! I haven't looked at any concrete evidence in the way of code or patch notes or anything.

Rip

You should play however you have the most fun! 😊

I was fishing over there because I accidentally lost a bait maker into the ocean from the docks earlier. 😔

@@Leapalot Ooops!

Wait. What's wrong with the rock to the left of the leftmost pier at the beach?

@@StormEagle5 There's a myth floating around since basically forever that fish are more common there. It's harmless, because it's no worse than the rest of the ocean, but telling people false information they can regurgitate is fun.

​​@@photemy5733 Actually it's not completely false. As a modder for the game, fishing by the rock actually gives more of a chance for higher quality fish. And a slight increase in chances for certain fish to spawn. The game calculates quality and spawn based on depth, tile distance from shore, fishing level, etc. if you look closely, the area around the rock is a darker color, that's the depth. It's not a big thing for late game fishing, but it does help for early game to make a better profit. Rivers also have spots where there's more depth.

Cave jelly replaces trash, not fish.

The exact hook mechanics are a little opaque to me, but I think it's a caldera specific interaction tbh. The cave fish also have unique verifiable interactions with targeted bait that set their catch percentages and do affect trash bycatch, and the caldera also doesn't account for the curiosity lure so I think it just... works differently. But you could very well be correct and I'm just wasting space typing out my theories! 😅

Shouldn't Ice Pip be efficient then? Low trash rate? Targeted basically removes ghost fish right?

@@fumofumo7815 ice pip should be just under 20% weight with curiosity lure and targeted bait. I haven't spent any time on it though to give you a personal experience. And that's not terrible, but it comes back to like.... If every five casts gives you one with targeted bait but you only get 5-10 bait at a time... It's almost better to just use challenge if you can at that point.

Salmence does a decent job covering them in his 1.6 money-making video!

🤔🤔🤔

My gut says mystic tree with the heavy tapper would be pretty spicy. Trade the syrup for Fairy Dust. Fairy Dust your Kegs with starfruit or ancient fruit. You would get 1,000 gold if you sold the syrup. The wine with artisan is worth either 3,150 or 2,310 so you're either doubling or tripling the value by trading for Fairy dust. But I haven't don't enough research to know if there's something I'd rather do and it's already a lot of work to keg everything once a week. Do you really want to Fairy Dust and keg everything even more often? 🤔

@@Leapalot Right now I'm trying a pretty insane strategy: spam treasure totems in Ginger island. This way I got many golden coconuts I cracked (using the predictor) to have only banana saplings. Now my farm is scattered with banana trees and, once they are fully grown, I plan to plant ancient fruits with deluxe retaining soil between them. As far as I know banana trees are the most profitable source per tile and ancient fruits don't need high quality, since they are going to end up in kegs

I do want to head back to coral island! There have been a couple updates since my last time playing. I'm not sure what that time line looks like though, to be completely transparent. 🙏

www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/21332

I've done a little surgeon fishing and wasn't impressed with my experience. Could very well be bad luck. Haven't tried pike though! Could be interesting. 🤔

@@Leapalot Surgeons are especially evasive while in the water, I find. I hope you have better luck finding pike! There's probably a specific fish in each area every season that has a much higher probability to be caught + sells for a decent chunk, making the new bait maker a very good option for optimize-obsessed fishermen in the valley!

@@Leapalot i have done sturgeons and my average day catches like 3 LMB, 4 perches/carps, a Bullhead, a Chud and anywhere from 10-15 sturgeons depending on how quick the bobber bites it's definitely more committal then other fish but it's also not bad. In the case you catch LMB it's still a 100 base fish and they are easy to catch, in addition sturgeons are rather simple to find when compared with catfish (same number of seasons but no need for stupid rain) and you can get to it easier via minecrarts meanwhile the only catfish shortcut is filled with trash

​@@user-oy2zg3bt6nFastest route to catfish is probably below Jodi's. Maybe house/cabin at bottom of farm then beelining would be optimal im that case. Not sure

Thank you! I work in the financial unit of the IT department at a university. I used to work in communications across the hall for the same department though. 🤷

@Leapalot That's fantastic experience and it shows here. I'm working on transitioning to data/business analysis and a hurdle of mine is being concise, so your videos are helpful for both work and leisure lol

I have a very strong hunch that it does based on testing, but I'm not great with digging into code so I can't say for sure.

@@Leapalot well,I may try to try it out.. to be honest, I havent tried to put that bait in crabpot at all (so cant say if it is even possible), but then if it works, one could make possibly decent side money on crabpot with most expensive target bait

I was using the predictor mod in the description for this video. I don't use it normally so I'm not super familiar with it yet. I used to use fishing info overlays, but it's not compatible with 1.6. 😔

Good question. It only brings you up to 16 percent, so I would have to think hard about it. That's kind of the breakpoint where I'd rather just use wild bait for the chance at doubles. You could go either way I think, but with a high luck day I believe I'd go wild bait. 🤔

That's awesome!

That's UIInfoSuite2. There's a link in my mod list in the description!

I think that's totally possible! I usually keep crops low until sprinklers. 13 parsnips gets you to level 1 for a scarecrow. Depending on how many silver you get, you can usually get to level 2 with 16ish kale. Or rice can be really helpful. If you get to level 2 by strawberry day you can easily get some sprinklers down and push farming to 6 or higher without really watering much of anything. I like to plant 13 parsnips, 1 bean and 1 cauli on day 1. Then when I have a scarecrow add potatoes rice and kale to make sure I can complete the spring bundle after the egg festival so I can pick up speed gro that night. I'm sure there are more optimal ways to play, but I like to have lots of strawberries on normal sprinklers. 😊

@@Leapalot Reporting back, It works pretty well. I did just enough crops to get things rolling in xp + bundles and spamming seasonal seeds to get foraging up really early because I wanted to make sure I had ways to earn money that couldn't drop into water to maximize space on the riverlands farm. Mushroom logs are kind of nuts, and the only animals I bothered with beyond bundles are pigs (for oil and thus rain totems!) rabbits and ducks. Rabbits for wool and friendship and ducks because they're adorable and swim everywhere on the farm. Because I need so much hardwood I ended up going the lumberjack route, dives into the mines were almost exclusively to get as much fire quartz as I could muster. With staggered mushroom logs and 20 dehydrators (now 40 i think?) working in a shed the constant cashflow is really nice. I just got to Ginger Island so I'll make that area into the massive chunk money maker. The fish and forage playstyle is really really strong early though. Mushroom logs and pine trees being basically everywhere + them working in winter (which doesn't make any sense but I'm here for it) is just ridiculous. I was making almost 60k a day in winter, 2-300k if I popped a rain totem and fished as hard as I could for catfish, right on the riverlands farm since it counts as the river and catfish bait is silly. Rain totems mean you reduce the days it takes to get dried chanterelles by 1, and if you keep popping them,, it goes down to 2 days, the rain totem pays for itself just through that alone and then some since every log with enough trees is 1700ish gold. With like 60 of those and catfish money, it's nice. I had a barn with baby pigs by the flower festival just because smoking catfish and a few rainy days is crazy profitable in the early game now. You were right, the fish smoker + bait maker is a nuts combo, especially for catfish! IT allows for so much wiggle room.

If you're skipping the mini game and get 3 perfect catches each time, I would grab the challenge bait. Use the curiosity lure and a dresses spinner to increase catch rate. It'll be significantly better to catch 3 of them 20 percent of the time VS 1 of them 32 percent of the time.

​ Mods shouldn't be scanned for data even if I'd love to see a with math for SVE fish. I saw those prices... ridiculous. Non-legendary fish worth 1400 pre-perks? A little crazy but SVE does have higher ramping all round with its balance!

It's in the description!

I think they fill different niches. I would use a fish pond for a fish I need once in a while like a midnight carp to cook seafoam pudding. And definitely jar the roe in the meantime! I use targeted bait when I want to catch 40+ catfish in one day, smoke them and make some cash.

Maybe! But I'm just glad to have something to do other than rush skull cavern and sell iridium bars with blacksmith.

@@Leapalot same. Love that ConcernedApe is adding variety to the end game gold grind. Just wish the recipe got pushed back a little. Fishing is alredy the best thing you can do in spring and now its tripled in value. Make it something you unlock at 2 hearts with Willy or hard coded into summer as a "willy expending his stock for new season".

Yep, I'm familiar with that. I should have just used the term, or used "distance from shore" which I think the wiki might be transitioning to use instead. I was trying to avoid terms people wouldn't know and flipped all the way back to being less helpful! 😅

@@Leapalot Whoops, i got worried you were missing something and it was entirely unnecessary xD. o7 Keep on with the solid content Mr. KZfaqr, love the Tl;Dr followed by detailed breakdowns.

Love the roe book!

It does feel that way. Have you seen documentation or anything? I'm mostly just looking for something I can quote and I might have just missed it.

@@Leapalotit’s Antidotal but it feels like 20% which feels way to low be just bad luck But it wasn’t nerfed it would of been too op probably out shadowing late game skull caven as the best active money maker At least with the legend 2 it’s time locked

Yes. It consumes the fish to produce the bait!