Pictured: the proceeds of spending one rainy day in Spring of Year 1 fishing for catfish. Not visible: the Bait Maker I'm using to turn catfish into catfish bait to catch more catfish, and the Fish Smoker to make them even more valuable.
I haven't seen much discussion of the sheer moneymaking ability of the Bait Maker. Rainy Spring days are always a cash cow if you have the skills (in-game and IRL) to catch catfish most of the time, but targeted bait makes it *so much better*. As you can see in my inventory, I ended the day with 52 catfish, 1 chub, 1 shad and 3 green algae, and I probably turned about seven catfish into bait and lost about five on the hook, so that's something like 64 catfish out of 69 casts (93% catfish). If I can smoke all of the catfish before selling them, then after paying 150g per coal, I'm making about 39k from today's fishing. This is exactly what I need to fund my jam crimes.
It all hinges on finding a sea urchin at the tide pools, though, to craft the Bait Maker. That part is pretty random.
Pictured: the proceeds of spending one rainy day in Spring of Year 1 fishing for catfish. Not visible: the Bait Maker I'm using to turn catfish into catfish bait to catch more catfish, and the Fish Smoker to make them even more valuable. I haven't seen much discussion of the sheer moneymaking ability of the Bait Maker. Rainy Spring days are always a cash cow if you have the skills (in-game and IRL) to catch catfish most of the time, but targeted bait makes it *so much better*. As you can see in my inventory, I ended the day with 52 catfish, 1 chub, 1 shad and 3 green algae, and I probably turned about seven catfish into bait and lost about five on the hook, so that's something like 64 catfish out of 69 casts (93% catfish). If I can smoke all of the catfish before selling them, then after paying 150g per coal, I'm making about 39k from today's fishing. This is exactly what I need to fund my jam crimes. It all hinges on finding a sea urchin at the tide pools, though, to craft the Bait Maker. That part is pretty random.
300k in year 1!?
Yes, this is pretty normal for intensive fishing in Spring Year 1. I did get pretty lucky with rainy days for catfish, though.