While Monster Hunter hasn’t yet succumbed to the trend of putting farming minigames in every game possible - and is fairly light on minigames in general - it has long ago capitulated to the inevitable with an even more virulent strain of obligatory minigame: fishing. This page will discuss how fishing works in Monster Hunter Wilds, including how to apply lures, move the lure to entice fish to bite and ultimately haul in the thirty Whoppers and the squid you need for the A-fish-ianado and Monster (Squid) Hunter achievements/trophies, respectively!

Page Breakdown¶

Unlocking Fishing¶

After you reach the Scarlet Forest, you’ll be able to start a series of side quests by talking to an NPC named Kanya, who is standing near a pond by the base camp. The first quest she’ll give you is Fishing: Life, in Microcosm which merely tasks you with catching any fish. The Fishing Rod itself - a tool required to fish - should have unlocked earlier along with the rest of the game’s core tools after fighting the Quematrice earlier in the game. Technically you can fish any time after the Fishing Rod is unlocked, but you’ve no impetus to do so until Kanya’s questline starts up. More importantly, Kanya will unlock a variety of useful accessories for the fishing minigame, like lures, which broadens the range of fish you can catch. All that said, while Kanya’s questline isn’t necessary to start fishing, it is necessary to fish at your full potential, and you should consider completing her quests as soon as they pop up!

Complete Kanya’s first quest and eventually you’ll be able to start her second quest, Catch a Goldenfish, and to facilitate the task Kanya will give you Emerald Jitterbait and Golden Bughead lures, alongside the vanilla Common Wood Minnow you started with. The next quest The Catch of a Lifetime! will introduce you to whoppers (which is much of this page’s focus) along with the Tuff Joint Bait and Duster Rig lures. Finally, the last quest in Kanya’s fishing questline, Razzle Dazzle will unlock the Tentacle Jig bait. Obviously you’ll need to make use of these lures to catch the target fish, so you’ll be doing some fishing enroute to gathering all the tools you need to fully unlock the potential of the fishing minigame. Check out the links to in-depth guides for each of the aforementioned fishing side quests, if you need help finding the target fish.

Catching Small Fish¶

There are two levels to the fishing minigame - catching small fish is relatively simple compared to hauling in whoppers, but you need to do both phases for whoppers, so we might as well start with the basics. Before you can catch fish, you need to find fish, and surprisingly the best spot to look for fish of all sorts is in water. You can usually spot them swimming around, and once you’re more familiar with the fish, you’ll be able to start identifying them before you catch them. Failing that, you could always reel a few junk fish in to clear the area a bit.

Speaking of which, to catch any fish you’ll need to start by equipping your Fishing Rod, selecting the right lure for the fish you want to catch, and casting somewhere in the vicinity of said fish. The lure plays a large role in getting a fish to bite - which is the end goal of this phase of this fishing minigame - but so does how you move the lure, and if you just follow the on-screen instructions you may find yourself underprepared for dealing with this part of the minigame. As the game tells you, you can jerk the lure around in the water using , and this works fine for some fish. You can also rotate the left analog counter-clockwise to reel the lure in smoothly, and generally some fish like the lure to jerk while others like it to move smoothly. Many fish aren’t even all that picky about the lure or how it moves… but rarer ones will be very picky - the solution is trial and error!

Once you get the fish to bite press the / button and this phase is over. Smaller (read: non-whopper) fish will be reeled in automatically with no further input from the player, but if you’ve drawn the attention of a whopper, it’s time to move to phase two (see below).

Catching Whoppers - A-fish-ianado Achievement¶

After all that preamble, it’s time for the main event: catching whoppers! Whoppers are, you may have guessed, not an exact term, but it seems to include any fish of sufficient size and strength to force you to begin the second phase of their minigame, where you’ll clash with the fish on the line to determine who becomes lunch and who goes home with an empty belly! Most whoppers seem to prefer the Tuff Joint Bait save for the squids (yes, they count as fish for the purposes of this guide), which can be enticed to bite the Tentacle Jig lure. In addition, most whoppers also seem to prefer you to reel the lure in steadily, so rotate the left analog stick counterclockwise until one bites, at which point the second phase of the fishing minigame will begin.

Once a whopper bites your lure, it’ll start to run. You need to move the left analog stick in the direction the whopper is swimming ( ) to avoid putting tension on the line. The game is generally pretty forgiving about this inasmuch as pressing the left analog in the wrong direction for a moment isn’t going to (usually) cause the whopper to break free. Keep this up and eventually the whopper will tire; when it stops moving, furiously rattle the left analog up and down () while holding / and you’ll reel the whopper in! This will likely take 2-3 cycles, but if the whopper bit close to shore you may haul it in with relatively little effort!

Of course things can’t be quite that easy. When you’re managing the tension, wearing the whopper out and trying to reel it in, you’ve got two more things to watch out for. First, some whoppers will jump, and when they do it’s important not to react too fast. Watch the jump and see which way they angle near the apex of the jump, then press in the direction the fish is jumping (if it’s going straight up, it’ll jump higher!) and press / . If you succeed the fish will tire faster, if not, it’ll put more tension on the line.

Other than that, you also need to be wary of obstacles in the water, and by obstacles the game mostly means boulders. If you let a whopper swim behind a boulder, it’ll get away, so this is the one time where you need to pull against the whopper. Putting tension on the line is a risk, but not as much of an auto-fail as letting the whopper get behind a rock. If possible, choose to cast from a location on the shore where there aren’t any rocks whoppers can swim behind, if possible, and if not, try to ensure you’re casting your line as far away from the rocks as possible. If there are two rocks, try to cast evenly between them.

Whoppers constitute several species of fish and they have different behaviors. Some are faster, but tire easily. Some are relatively docile, but hardy. Squids won’t jump. Some will change direction or leap frequently, etc. Trying to catch them will invariably teach you their quirks. In our opinion, the best place to catch whoppers is area 17 in the Scarlet Forest - there’s a broad shore to fish from and there are usually several whoppers swimming about, especially in the morning and evening… you can even find squids at night, making it a one-stop shop when it comes to farming these fishing trophies. There’s even a camp nearby, so once you’ve fished out all the whoppers just return to your tent and rest until morning/even (we prefer the “Plenty” weather, just for the aesthetics…). Catch any 30 whoppers and you’ll unlock the A-fish-ianado achievement/trophy.

Catching a Squid - Monster (Squid) Hunter Achievement¶

Squids are a type of tentacled whopper that you need to catch if you want to unlock the Monster (Squid) Hunter achievement/trophy, and they are caught the same way any other whopper is. Still, this is a specific whopper, so more details are in order. You can find them in area 17 of the Scarlet Forest, at night. Look close and you’ll see them swimming about - they’re somewhat luminescent. Use the Tentacle Jig lure and jerk it towards you (don’t reel it in smoothly - squids prefer chasing prey that moves in jerky motions) Once hooked, you just need to reel them in like any other whopper - they’ve got a lot of stamina and move erratically, but they don’t jump and are otherwise unremarkable, more of a test of patience than anything else.