Bait Selection: The Secret to Fishing with 100% Success

Used bait sucks. It confuses a lot of people, because it's marked as bait, so they think it's bait, but it's not: it's used bait. Bait that has been already used. It has a gold value of 0, and no place in your bait wheel: it is garbage.

But when you first start fishing, it seems inevitable that you'll end up with used bait. That's because you're using the wrong bait. I got lucky and found a little book on a bookshelf that changed my life, and was smart enough to take a screenshot of it. From this book, I learned that not about the different fish you can catch and what types of bait to use to catch them, but the different types of water those fish live in. That book is A Guide to Fishing Tamriel by "The Old Slaughterfish".

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The next page doesn't matter, it literally has one line on it, because Ol' Slaughterfish had a shitty editor. Anyway, right there was the key to unlocking the 100% success rate fishing, compared to the 50% failure rate* you get when using the wrong bait: selecting the right bait for the four different water types. When you use the right type of bait for the type of water you are fishing, not only will you have a 100% success rate, you will also be able to catch the rare fish for your achievements and wet gunny sacks that contain crafting materials.

* I haven't had a really long time to study the failure rate, but with what I've done so far, it comes out to 50%, which is a nice, round number that people love, so I believe it to be true).

The Nine Types of Bait

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When you pull up your handy dandy bait wheel, there are nine different types of bait. These baits are:

Worms

Worms are a preferred bait for oceans. You can find worms when harvesting plants, like jute and other plants used in clothing, or plants used in alchemy, and apparently from zombies-type mobs according to squidgod2000. These are probably the slowest to harvest of the 4 baits you can harvest on land in my experience.

Insect Parts

Insect parts are a preferred bait for rivers. You can find insect parts by harvesting insects you see flying around, like torchbugs, butterflies and flesh flies.

Crawlers

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Crawlers are a preferred bait for foul water. You can find crawlers by killing certain level 1 creatures like spiders, scribs and centipedes, and also from certain zombie-like mobs. You can also find them in plants, like worms.

Guts

Guts are a preferred bait for lakes. You can find guts by killing certain level 1 creatures like chickens, bantam and pony guar, squirrels and rabbits.

Fish Roe

Fish roe are a preferred bait for foul water. You can catch fish roe while fishing in rivers.

Minnow

Minnows are a preferred bait for lakes. You can catch minnows while fishing in oceans.

Chub

Chub are a preferred bait for oceans. You can catch chub while fishing in foul water.

Shad

Shad are a preferred bait for rivers. You can catch shad while fishing in lakes.

Simple Bait

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Simple bait is not a preferred bait for anything. Simple bait sucks. I spent Day 6 of my fishing report explaining why simple bait sucks. You can buy simple bait from a merchant for 15 gold, which isn't worth it at all. Fuck simple bait. I renounce simple bait.