The Destiny 2 fishing minigame is one of the new activities added as part of the Season of the Deep. In keeping with its aquatic theme, players can grab their very own set of Fishing Tackle to try and catch fish from across the EDZ, Nessus, and Savathun’s Throne World. Once caught, you can lug your haul back to the HELM and dump them in the aquarium for rewards.
If you’ve finished the Lightfall campaign, you might want to try the new Parting the Veil quest to get the curated Epochal Integration hand cannon. Otherwise, here’s how to unlock Destiny 2 fishing this season, how the activity works, the best ways to farm bait, plus an explanation of what that mysterious Focused Fishing buff actually does.
How to unlock Fishing Tackle
To start fishing you first need to unlock the Fishing Tackle, which you can do by progressing through the seasonal storyline and activities. Here’s exactly what you need to do:
- Complete the Descent story mission
- Finish a Salvage activity
- Complete the Operation Thunderbolt mission that introduces the Deep Dive activity
- Speak to Sloane at the HELM projector
This should unlock the Gone Fishin’ quest that directs you to speak to Suraya Hawthorne in the tower. Once you do, she’ll give you the Fishing Tackle and set you to work earning bait through activities.
How to fish in Destiny 2
Image 1 of 2
Now you’ve completed some activities and collected bait, you can start fishing. The quest will direct you to the EDZ fishing spot shown on the map, and once you arrive all you need to do is cast your line using E and then press E again as soon as a fish bites and the ‘perfect catch’ text appears. Grab your fish from where it landed and go again. You can also find fishing spots marked in The Cistern’s radiolaria lake on Nessus and in the Miasma on Savathun’s Throne World.
These spots seem to disappear when public events are active, so if you’re searching around where the map marker is but can’t find one, that’s probably why. On the plus side, you can quickly complete the public event to get yourself some bait to use while fishing. It’s worth noting that you can also catch fish with no bait, though it seems to reduce your chances of catching rare, legendary, and exotic fish.
Once you’ve caught some fish, head to the HELM and deposit them in the aquarium via the central tank to get rewards. Legendary purple fish each give you a seasonal Reckoning weapon, regular legendary weapon, or a Deep Engram, while green and blue fish give you glimmer and seasonal reputation. Exotic yellow fish have a chance to give you… well, exotics, or even ascendant shards, though they are quite hard to catch.
What is Focused Fishing?
As you catch fish, you might notice the Focused Fishing bar appear as a buff on the left side of the screen. This only builds when you and other players at the same fishing spot catch legendary purple fish, and as it increases, so too does the likelihood of you catching legendary or even exotic fish. The only problem is that when fishing spots disappear due to public events, the focused fishing bar goes back to normal, so you have to fish as much as you can with other players in that short period of time to buff your chances.
How to farm bait
While you can fish without bait, it seems to reduce your chances of catching the higher rarities of fish, which already seem pretty low. You can get bait from a number of activities:
- Salvage: 18 bait
- Deep Dives: 15 bait
- Public Events: Six bait
- Patrols: Two bait
- Playlist activities: Ten bait
- Destination materials: One bait per material
The amounts above may vary—if you’re doing a heroic for instance— but the classic combo of public events, while also doing kill-based patrols, and grabbing destination materials while you do, seems like the best method. Fishing spots are often disrupted by public events happening, so you can quickly run off and grab extra bait to use. Be sure to put a resource scavenger mod on your ghost so you can quickly find those material nodes, too.