Genshin Fishing Guide — Bait, Fish and Free Weapons

What Fishing Actually Pays

Three four-star weapons in Genshin Impact are bought with fish: "The Catch," End of the Line, and Fleuve Cendre Ferryman. Each one refines with a dedicated material rather than duplicate copies, so all three reach refinement 5 without a single wish. No Primogems, no Original Resin, no banner luck — just a rod, the right bait, and a shopping list.

That shopping list is spread across eight separate Fishing Association vendors, gated behind twelve bait formulas, and metered by a 72-hour respawn timer. So here is the whole thing priced out: what each reward costs, which bait catches the fish that pay for it, and which of those fish only exist between 18:00 and 06:00.

The Unlock Is Two Quests Deep

Fishing is not available from the start, and the prerequisite is not a fishing quest.

You need the Serenitea Pot first — Adventure Rank 28 plus the Archon Quest A New Star Approaches, which unlocks A Teapot to Call Home: Part I. Only once the teapot system exists does the Mondstadt world quest Exploding Population become available, and that quest is what actually switches fishing on.

Exploding Population is worth doing on its own terms. It hands you a Wilderness Rod, the Formula: Fruit Paste Bait, and ten each of Fruit Paste, Redrot, False Worm and Fake Fly Bait, plus 3 Hero's Wit and 30,000 Mora. Note the asymmetry there: you get four kinds of bait but only one of the four formulas. The other three still cost 3 Medaka each from Nantuck in Mondstadt.

One more rule that shapes everything below: fishing forcibly swaps you to the Traveler, so if the Traveler is knocked out you cannot fish at all.

Twelve Baits, Fifty-Nine Fish

Each fish species is attracted to exactly one bait. There is no universal bait in the permanent game — the one that catches everything, Glowgrass Bait, was an event item from the 2.1 Lunar Realm event and only worked inside a single event fishing point.

That leaves twelve craftable baits and 59 catchable fish. (The wiki's Fish category lists 66 entries; seven of those are not obtainable by fishing at all — Black-Back Bass, Blue-Fin Bass, Golden Bass, Floating Ray, Frostfin Whale and Moonglow Frostfin Whale are pure wildlife, and Moonfin was event-only.)

Fishing points refresh on a 72-hour cycle, and each point holds two separate spawn sets — one for 06:00 to 18:00, one for 18:00 to 06:00. Adjusting the in-game clock does not speed up the respawn, but it does swap the spawn set, which means a point that carries a day fish and a night fish can be harvested twice per cycle.

Every Bait Recipe Is Two Ingredients

The recipes are uniform to the point of being boring, and that is good news: two materials, ten bait per craft, every time. Nothing here needs Mora or a Crafting Bench unlock beyond the formula itself.

Three of those pull from Dendrobium, Sakura Bloom and Sumeru Rose — local specialties you may already be farming for a character. Fruit Paste Bait is the odd one out and the one you want stockpiled anyway, because Medaka is the currency that buys almost every formula in the game.

Buy the Fishing Line Stabilizer Before Anything Else

The Fishing Line Stabilizer costs 3 Medaka. It is sold by all eight Fishing Association members, and it is the first thing you should spend fish on.

It is a gadget that reads how many of a given species you have already caught and buffs the reel-in accordingly. You do not need to equip it — it works from the inventory, and you can toggle it off if you want the unassisted minigame.

Read that last row again. At full power the minigame stops punishing you for leaving the Ideal Tension Zone — progress keeps climbing regardless. Every rod below asks for 20 of a species, so a rod grind clears the 16-catch threshold with four to spare. The weapon bills are less even: Pufferfish and Bitter Pufferfish run to 40 each and the two Sumeru marlins to 48, but Raimei Angelfish stops at 18 and both Peach of the Deep Waves and Maintenance Mek: Platinum Collection stop at 12 — under the threshold, so the shopping list alone never takes those two to full power.

Two details that save time: fish you caught before you bought the gadget still count toward the tally, and Ornamental Fish count too.

Day and Night Are Two Different Spawn Tables

Bait is only half the lock. A species that is outside its window is simply not in the water, whatever you have tied on.

Here are the spawn windows for the fish that are shop currency at some association. Times are in-game.

Notice the shape of it. Seven of the eight regional rods below ask for four species and Snezhnaya's asks for three — and on seven of those eight, the bill contains at least one day-only fish and at least one night-only fish. The single exception is Fontaine's Wavepiercer, whose four species are three Maintenance Meks with no recorded time restriction plus the any-time Streaming Axe Marlin. It is the only rod on the list you can finish without touching the in-game clock.

The Three Free Weapons, and What They Cost

All three share a chassis: 4-star, 42 base ATK, 10% Energy Recharge as the secondary stat, and a passive that scales across five refinements. They are the Fishing Association weapon series.

Refinement does not use duplicate weapons. Each has a dedicated refinement material — Ako's Sake Vessel, Original Fish Ointment, and Martens' Omni-Fix — stocked four at a time, which is exactly R1 to R5 and no further. Here is the full bill for a maxed copy of each.

The Catch is the most expensive of the three and it is not close in effort, because of what those 18 Raimei Angelfish are.

The Catch Is Night-Locked

Raimei Angelfish is rated Very Hard to catch, it uses False Worm Bait, it is Inazuma-only, and it spawns only between 18:00 and 06:00. The weapon itself needs 6 of them; each of the four Ako's Sake Vessels needs 3 more. That is 18 Very Hard, night-only, region-locked fish before the refinement is done.

The other 120 fish on The Catch's bill — Golden Koi, Rusty Koi, Pufferfish, Bitter Pufferfish — all spawn at any hour and all take Fake Fly Bait. So the honest plan is: farm the koi and pufferfish whenever, and treat Raimei as a separate, deliberate, after-dark job. If you are building toward a free-to-play team, budget The Catch as two grinds rather than one.

Eight Rods, One Region Each

Every Fishing Association sells a rod, and every rod has the same effect with a different region attached: while you stay inside the Ideal Tension Zone, the rod steadily shortens the time the fish struggles and raises your success chance. Outside that region, the effect does nothing.

The Snezhnaya rod is the cheapest of the eight — three species instead of four, 60 fish instead of 80.

Two rods sit outside that table. The Wilderness Rod is the starter you are handed during Exploding Population, and its listed effect is, in full, "A basic fishing rod." The Moonstringer, from the 2.1 Lunar Realm event quest Over the Moon, is the interesting one: it shortens the struggle timer at an accelerating rate rather than a steady one (the acceleration resets if you leave the Ideal Tension Zone), and its effect text names no region at all. It is not in any of the eight Fishing Association shops, so if you did not do that event, there is no way to buy it now.

What Version 7.0 Added to Fishing

Version 7.0, Everwinter Without Mercy, went live on 12 August 2026 and opened Snezhnaya. Beyond the domains, bosses and specialties, it added a full fishing layer:

• Six new fish — Charcoal Snowfin, Cream Snowfin, Moonlight Snowfin, Ruby Starbloom Fish, Frostpetal Starbloom Fish, Iridescent Starbloom Fish.
• Glimmering Bait, crafted from Snowball Flower 1 + Iron Chunk 1 for 10 bait, formula from Zherebtsov for 3 Medaka.
• Zherebtsov in Morepesok, the eighth Fishing Association vendor.
• Scepter of the Snow Angler King, the regional rod.
• "Round and Round, the Little Fish Go," a furnishing blueprint costing Cream Snowfin 6, Moonlight Snowfin 12 and Iridescent Starbloom Fish 12 — 30 fish, the priciest of the six furnishing blueprints the associations sell.

What 7.0 did not add is a fourth free weapon. Zherebtsov's stock is a formula, a blueprint, a rod and a Fishing Line Stabilizer — no polearm, no bow, no sword. The weapon series still stops at three, and the newest of them, Fleuve Cendre Ferryman, released with Fontaine in 2023.

Snezhnaya's six fish all have Ornamental variants, so if you are stocking a pond in your teapot, the Snowfin and Starbloom families are new material.

Thoma Is the Only Fishing Talent

Thoma's Utility Passive, Snap and Swing, gives a 20% chance of a double catch when you fish successfully in Inazuma. It is the only entry in the wiki's Fishing Talents category — no other character in the game has a passive that touches fishing.

That matters precisely once: Inazuma is where The Catch lives, and The Catch is the 138-fish weapon. Put Thoma in the party for that grind.

Two caveats worth knowing before you rely on it. Bonus fish from Snap and Swing are not tracked in the Archive, so they do not count toward the Fishing Line Stabilizer's power tiers, and they do not count toward the Ding Ding Ding! achievement's 2,000-fish target. They are shop currency and nothing else. In Co-Op, only players who own Thoma get the passive.

The Whole Shop, Priced in Fish

Buying one of every item from all eight Fishing Associations — three weapons at R5, eight rods, six furnishing blueprints, eleven bait formulas and one Fishing Line Stabilizer — comes to 1,096 fish.

Of that total, 136 are plain Medaka — the Very Easy, any-time fish that Fruit Paste Bait catches, and the currency for every bait formula and the Stabilizer. Roughly one fish in eight on the entire bill is a Very Easy Medaka, so a standing Medaka stockpile does more work than it looks like it should.

The three weapon vendors carry the weight — Kujirai Momiji at 218, Delaroche at 204 and Loumelat at 201, against 89 to 102 everywhere else. If you only ever visit one association, make it Kujirai Momiji.

Quick Action Checklist

• Unlock the Serenitea Pot at Adventure Rank 28, then run Exploding Population in Mondstadt to switch fishing on.
• Buy the Fishing Line Stabilizer for 3 Medaka from whichever vendor you reach first. It is the cheapest real upgrade in the system.
• Buy Formula: Redrot Bait, False Worm Bait and Fake Fly Bait from Nantuck — the quest gives you the bait but not three of the four formulas.
• Stockpile Medaka. 136 of the 1,096 fish you will ever spend are Medaka.
• Farm Golden Koi, Rusty Koi, Pufferfish and Bitter Pufferfish on Fake Fly Bait at any hour; they are 120 of The Catch's 138.
• Do Raimei Angelfish as a separate after-dark run with False Worm Bait, and bring Thoma.
• Re-check fishing points on a 72-hour cycle, and swap the in-game clock between day and night to harvest both spawn sets at the same point.
• In Snezhnaya, craft Glimmering Bait from Snowball Flower and Iron Chunk after buying the formula from Zherebtsov in Morepesok.