The Sims 4 Fishing Skill Guide
Fishing is a skill that’s been in The Sims 4 since the start and is a fun one that has your sims spending all their time outside with nature.
This skill isn’t for sims who love to be around others or are lazy, this is for sims who love to be alone and want to feel the sun on their face.
What is Fishing Good For?
There are so many uses for fishing from selling the fish for money, cooking with the fish you catch or using them to decorate your sim’s house. Fishing is also great if your sim wants to become a fisherman with the part-time fisherman career that came with The Sims 4: Island Living!
How to Gain The Fishing Skill
There are two ways your sim can gain the fishing skill and both are fun. The first way is to read fishing skill books that you can purchase by clicking on any book case. You’ll find three books to choose from:
- Fishing Vol 1: Getting Hooked
- Fishing Vol 2: Tackles and Techniques
- Fishing Vol 3: See The Fish, Be The Fish
You’ll want to start with the first book to start gaining the skill and every few levels you’ll want to move up to the next skill level.
The other way to gain the skill is to actually go fishing. There are a whole bunch of fishing locations in the game that you can find to fish from and each has different fish that can be caught in these locations!
Best Mood to Practice Fishing
When The Sims 4 was launched emotions were such a big selling point because they impact a lot of your sim’s life including their skill gains. Each skill has an ideal mood to earn it and for fishing that mood is focused.
To get your sims feeling focused there are a few things you can do including playing chess, using a microscope, or hanging mathematical diagrams in your sim’s house.
Best Traits for Fishy Sims
I’m obsessed with finding the best traits for my sims because they have a huge impact on skill gain and mood of my sims. There are certain traits that can help so much with fishing including:
- Loves the Outdoors: A sim who is wanting to gain the fishing skill is going to spend so much time outdoors, so you’d hope they love it. With this trait they’ll get positive moodlets when they spend time outdoors.
- Genius: Genius sims are wonderful because they are more likely to get focused which is the ideal emotion for this skill.
- Cheerful: A cheerful sim is just a great sim all the way around. These sims get more happy moodlets which can help boost others like focused.
- Loner: Fishing is a really solitary activity and your sim is going to be spending tons of time alone, so having the loner trait is great because they aren’t going to be as impacted if they aren’t chatting with sims too much.
How to Cheat The Fishing Skill
I’m obsessed with how much simmers love to cheat in the game and honestly, I do too. Cheating the fishing skill is easy and you just need to use stats.set_skill_level Major_Fishing 10 to max out the skill.
If you want a skill in a different level you’d just change out the 10 at the end for whatever level you’d like, for example, stats.set_skill_level Major_Fishing 5 would give you level 5 of the skill.
Fishing Skill Levels
There are ten total levels of the sims 4 fishing skill for your sims to earn. As they increase their skill they are going to unlock new types of fish and fun new interactions.
| Skill Level | Level Rewards |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | Your sim’s new skill in fishing allows them to catch fish, mount them on the wall, or keep them in a fish bowl. |
| Level 2 | Your sim can now catch Bass, Koi, and Trout from fishing spots that contain them. They can also catch Neon Angelfish. |
| Level 3 | Your sim can now use bait to catch bigger, better fish. They can examine the water near fishing spots to study fish movements and identify new fish. They can now catch fish using fish traps in ocean water! |
| Level 4 | Your sim can now catch Catfish and Tilapia from fishing spots where they are found. With a steadier hand and sharper eye, they will have a better chance of reeling in treasure while fishing. They can now catch Princess Parrotfish! |
| Level 5 | Your sim is developing the mental fortitude and patience required to be a great fisherman. They can now fish in any weather, and can fish even while being a little uncomfortable, tense, or stressed. They can mentor others in fishing and can now catch butterfly fish! |
| Level 6 | Your sim can now catch rainbow fish from fishing spots where they are found. As a respected fisherman with knowledge to share they can share fishing tips to help other sims improve their angling. They can now use up to 4 fish traps at a time and can catch the elusive half moon fighting plakat! |
| Level 7 | Your sim can now catch the anglerfish which lurks in the deepest waters. Master fishermen may now share some insider secrets on where to find the rarest of fish when asked about secret fishing spots. They’ve become more adept at deep sea fishing and can catch the coveted Bluefin Tuna! |
| Level 8 | Your sim is now a fixture in the fishing community and renowned near and far – everyone on hooklikensinker.sim says so! They can now teach other sims to fish. They can now catch the deadly coral scorpionfish! |
| Level 9 | Your sim can now patiently angle for a big catch and share expert fishing tips with other sims. They can now catch tropical sharks and pygymy swordfish. |
| Level 10 | Your sim is a true master of the fishing craft. They have mastered the art of trapping and can now have 6 fish traps and can catch the Golden Mahi Mahi. |
Cooking With Fresh Ingredients
I love when different skills are mixed together to make the game even better. When you catch fish you can use your fresh fish with your cooking skill and use the fish in recipes such as:
- Fish Tacos
- Fish Casserole
- Ambrosia
The quality of the fish you catch can have an impact on the quality of the food, so high quality fish will help create high quality meals.
Displaying Fish as Decor
When you gain the fishing skill you’ll have the option to display the fish you catch if you don’t want to eat or sell them. You have two options, to either mount the fish on the wall or you can place them in fish bowls and keep them as pets!
To mount a fish you’ll go into your sim’s inventory, click on a fish and choose mount and the mounted fish will be in your sim’s inventory. Then, you’ll drag it onto a wall and decorate with it!
You can also turn on the emotional aura on mounted fish that will give your sims a confident moodlet when they’re in the same room.
Bringing Sims Back to Life With Ambrosia
There are some recipes that are really awesome in the game and ambrosia is one of them. This recipe gives you the ability to bring a ghost back from death and part of the recipe is a fish, so you need a level 3 fishing skill to make this happen with catching the angelfish. You’ll also need the following:
- Death Flower
- Potion of Youth
- Level 5 Gardening
- Level 10 Gourmet Cooking
- Angelfish
Fishing Mentorship
When a sim gets the highest level of any skill they are able to mentor other sims to get them to gain skills more quickly. When a sim is fishing at a fishing location you can control your fisher sim and click and choose to mentor that sim and they will gain the skill more quickly.
If you have The Sims 4: Business & Hobbies installed in your game you can even mentor other sims for money! A sim with a maxed fishing skill can earn 430 simoleons per hour doing this!
Fishing With Other DLC
Island Living
The Sims 4: Island Living added so much to the fishing skill which is so fun. The first thing you can do is stand on a boat to do your fishing so you can fish deep in the water, which is super fun.
The next thing you can do is purchase fish traps to place in your sim’s water back yard. These can be set with or without bait and after a while a fish will appear and your sim can go and collect them.
You can click on the fish traps to check them whenever you want, your sim will go into the water and give them a good look.
Once the trap has fish inside you have the option to release the fish back into the water or empty the trap into your sim’s inventory.
You can even use fish to start becoming friends with dolphins! You’ll see a call over dolphin interaction when a sim is swimming in the ocean and you can feed the dolphin fish from your inventory to get them to be your friend and eventually do tricks for you!
Discover University
With The Sims 4: Discover University your sims are able to learn the skill in two new ways. The first way is to take a fishing elective class as one of their credits toward their degree.
The class they want to take is called Reeling Techniques for Fishing and your sim will gain the skill when in class and doing coursework.
The next way your sim can gain the sims 4 fishing skill is by taking a skill class. These are available at a building on both University campuses and will cost your sims 250 simoleons!
