Recommendation: Fisherman's Laidback Lifestyle (1.6)
Last edited by AtlasVBot on 2025-09-13 18:52:16
This page contains fish-focused mods. It can be used by players who either:
- love fishing and want to expand the lifestyle around it, or
- detest fishing, and wish for mechanics that can make it more bearable/fun.
This list was designed with both kinds of modders and balanced gameplay in mind. So there isn't any mod that entirely skips the minigame. If you want to, there are various mods with that function.
Instead, this list covers mods that encourage you to still play the mini-game, but through some new, refreshing, and more enjoyable ways.
Have fun!
Fishing Overhauls/Tweaks
Fishing Trawler - New Horizons
Author: PeacefulEnd (Nexus)
Go to weekly fishing trips with Willy's friend that can reward players with large amounts of fish, depending on how good you are at maintaining the boat!
Repair the nets as quickly as you can, close the water leaks in the hull, and keep fueling the boat with coal. This fast-paced, fun, and novel mini-game provides a refreshing and immersive mechanics for fishing in bulk.
Mouse Fishing
Author: ruggerbuns (Nexus)
This mod allows you to use your mouse cursor to control the green bobber bar during the fishing minigame.
It is a novel way to chase the fish movement!
The green bobber bar is smaller than normal, this is to ensure that fishing remains challenging. However, the green bobber bar's height is configurable if you want to customize it.
Fish Spot Bait
Author: Aedenthorn and Logophile (Nexus)
Create your very own fishing hot spot with a simple yet immersive way.
Toss a piece of bait and watch the fish bubbles appear!
Fishing Made Easy Suite
Author: Ericlegacy (Nexus)
Tweak your fishing experience to your heart's content! You can change difficulty (easy/hard), fish availability (time, seasons, weather), spawn rates, and sell value. You may also enable clean water mode (remove trash), recatch legendary fish, fish Prismatic Shards, boost Fish Pond loot, and more.
Personally, I think the best part (and the functionality I enable with this mod) is the immersive fish spawn modification. Now special fish also appears at these additional places: Stonefish at Mountain, Ice Pip at Forest Lake, Lava Eel at Desert. The Night Market fish (Midnight Squid, Spook Fish, and Blobfish) will now be fishable anywhere on the Beach during Winter after 5pm.
Yet Another Fishing Mod
Author: NeverToxic (Nexus)
This mod allows you to change and configure almost every aspect of fishing!
Set your difficulty, multipliers, fishing loot, animation speed, attachments, and even enhancements. Also works for multiplayer.
Fishing Skill Progression Upscale
Become a better angler with the more fish you catch, in more ways than just expanding the green bar!
Fishing Tweaks
Author: TWT233 (Nexus)
Personally, this is my favorite fishing mod. It simply removes the repetitive actions, keeps vanilla balance, and the mini-game is still kept intact. The statistic unlock mechanics is immersive and make so much sense.
Features include:
- Fishing Statistics: Tracks how many times you've caught each fish
- Auto-Casting: Automatically casts your fishing rod again after catching fish (still uses stamina)
- Auto-Baiting: Automatically applies bait from your inventory when depleted
- Auto-Tackling: Automatically replaces broken tackle from your inventory
- Get Used to That Fish: Rewards you with completed fishing minigame for fish you've caught multiple times, or did perfect catch for. Personally, my configuration is 10 normal catches and 3 perfect catches for each fish.
Fishing Progression 1.6
Author: ChadlyMasterson (Nexus)
The mod currently adds small passive buffs to fishing via reducing difficulty, chances to not reduce tackle durability, and chance to double hook both fish and trash.
Features:
- Difficulty reduction scaled by level
- Tackle durability restoration chance scaled by level
- Double hook chance scaled by level
- Auto hook fish unlocked at level milestone
- Auto treasure chests unlocked at level milestone
Easily Catch That Fish (Again)
Fishing Pond Facilities
Author: Tikamin557 (Nexus)
Once Willy becomes your friend, he will unlock a new area and facility.
The special pond facility allows allows you to catch all fish, except legendary ones.
With support for a lot of modded fish, too!
Magical Fishing Raft
Author: Tikamin557 (Nexus)
Unlock rafts that can be quickly warp you to fishing points.
You can catch fish from existing locations and a few added vanilla fish.
Enjoy immersive fishing in a nice location!
Fish Again and Again
Author: Kitty Kaninka (Nexus)
Have you managed to get your hands on a fish, but don't know how to find it again?
Say goodbye to that problem!
The description of all fish, crab pot fish etc have now been changed - to show where and how to catch them.
Bigger, Better Fishing Rewards
Fishing Chests Expanded
Author: aedenthorn (Nexus)
This customizable mod greatly expands the range of items received in fishing treasure chests.
It also adds coins to chest rewards.
Time to be a Pirate!
Nice Day For Fishin' - Fishing QoL and tweaks
Author: VaryelStudios (Nexus)
I personally like to use this mod for:
- Balancing fish price by progression (increase the sell price of all fish slightly at specific fishing levels)
- Add quests for catching normal fish
- Add quests for catching legendary fish
Lategame Fish Rebalance
Author: Imbion (Nexus)
A mod that rebalances fish to encourage fishing for difficult and conditional species.
Ensures that fishing is still profitable in the late game - a balancing patch that I 100% agree with.
Nicer Fishing Collectibles
Recessed Fish Tank
Author: Tikamin557 (Nexus)
Add 8 different sizes of huge recessed fish tanks, and a dedicated catalog.
Will make your house look like an underwater glass aquarium!
This mod is very beautiful. Admire your fishing collection in style.
More New Fish
Author: Hisameartwork and TrentXV (Nexus)
This mod adds new quests for year 2, 3 and 4, and two new elixirs that the recipe is received as quest rewards.
It also introduces 140 new fish to the game (fishable and crab pot), as well as new areas to fish.
The mod included a monthly magazine that may give you some tips on where to fish the new fish (as well as some data from the vanilla fish). NPCs Gift Taste have also been updated. A must-have for fishing addicts!
Unique Fish Additions
Author: otohimexoxo (Nexus)
This mod adds 40 unique and strange fish/foragables/crabpot fish to some areas of the game (specifically the beach, Secret Forest pond and Ginger Island).
Have fun with novel "bizarre", fascinating aquatic creatures!
Stardew Aquarium
Author: Project Stardew Aquarium (Nexus)
A great expansion to Stardew Valley! Here you can donate your fish to animated tanks for rewards.
- Includes a large new beach location with new custom shops.
- Help restore the Stardew Aquarium to its former glory by donating fish for its exhibitions!
- See the collection come to life in full animation as you contribute to the collection.
- Explore the beach outside and buy a snack from the beach shop
- Stock up on fishing supplies from the submarine shop if you want to try catching the rumored rare fish in these waters!
Beach Additional Storage Space Area
Author: Tikamin557 (Nexus)
Add a new location accessible from the Beach pier.
This is an easy-to-decorate maritime base and storage space.
Stow away your various aquatic stuff in your very own ocean balcony!
Immersive Fish Farming
Aquarism - Fish Pond Overhaul
Author: Arleau (Nexus)
Makes Fish Ponds great again! This overhaul mod boasts core features to support fishkeeping as reliable income, and also adds immersive mechanics for it.
Features:
- Persistent fish qualities
- Expanded item production from ponds
- Scaling roe production
- Spontaneous algae growth
- Radioactive enrichment to Fish Ponds
- Family sharing and mating ability for Legendary fish ponds
Big Fish Ponds
Author: Keisan28 (Nexus)
This mod upgrades to regular fish ponds that allows you to keep up to 20 fish. Their products have also been updated to match the new maximum capacity.
The Big Fish Pond is available from Robin after you earn Mother Catch achievement (catch 100 fish).
Tested to be compatible with Aquarism!
Shellfish Produce Pearls
Author: Taelende (Nexus)
Removes roe from all shellfish pond loot tables, and replaces it with a chance to produce pearls.
Default shellfish are: Mussels and Oysters (other species such as Clams and Cockles configurable).
Fish Pond Aquaponics
Author: zombifier (Nexus)
Are you bothered by how big fish ponds are, and how they're inferior to just using that space to grow crops?
This mod answers that question by saying "why not both?" and allows you to plant crops in them, granting benefits to both fish and crops.
Aquaponics: a farming system that combines hydroponics (growing plants in water) with aquaculture (raising fish). Nutrient-rich wastewater from aquaculture is fed to hydroponically grown crops, which in turn filter out toxic waste and allows the water to be recycled for continued use by the aquatic animals.
Fish Hatchery
Author: Alpha_Omegasis (Nexus)
This mod adds a new item, the fish hatchery, that hatches a fish from fish roe after three days.
Any fish roe can be accepted including modded fish roe.
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This list was compiled by Aragorn on Stardew Valley Discord. Feel free to ping to suggest more, and/or adding new mods.