Let's go catch some pesky pescados, folks.

There are already some basic manuals (and they're helpful, too). This one adds a few things that I didn't see in those. Note: I can't use screenshots - don't know why, but I can't get'em to work here.

First off - Fish Fights
The basics of fish fighting have been covered in at least one other manual. We can dig a little deeper, though.

Ok, you just hooked into a whale and there in the middle of your screen is the landing gauge. It's got two parts, an inner gauge that changes to green/yellow/red as you play your fish and an outer part I'm going to call the crossbar that shows the fish fighting YOU!

The inner part is easy enough to understand: As you reel, the resistance of the fish and strain on your gear go up toward red or down toward green. The outer part, the crossbar, is a gauge that shows who's winning, you or the fishie, as you try to land it.

You reel in by using the Left Mouse Button (LMB).

You cast, a fish takes your bait/lure, and it's on. To hook up your fish - and gain a bit of an advantage right off the bat sweep your rod to the left, right or straight back toward you and click the LMB.

The sweep benefits you because your gear has a value called "Jerk" (left click on your rod's pic in the bottom left corner when your bait is out of the water and it will show you what gear you're using. Choose the 'information' tab under your rod and you'll be able to find the jerk value along with lots of other info.)

When you sweep, your jerk value increases the progress you first make against the fish - and he also makes some progress against you, too. The sweep gives you an idea about what you've hooked into. Is it a monster? Does the inner gauge burst into the yellow or red zones? Or is it a wimpy minnow that barely moves the gauge into the green?

At the same time, your crossbar (the white bars on either side of the inner gauge) will move. This bar is important! It shows you whether your fish is getting closer to landing or running out your line to escape.

If it's a wimp, you can just hold the LMB and pull the rod straight back to you, the fish will tire out and pretty soon you'll land him. If he's fighting, the inner gauge will go up and the crossbar will move up, too, showing him running away. Let's get him!

You sweep and hook your fish and he takes off. The gauges are both moving up. There will be a surge from the fish and your inner gauge will spike. NOW STOP! and release the LMB. In a second or two, the gauges will stabilize. If you point your rod tip at the fish and lower it as far as it will go while also releasing the LMB, he feels less resistance and will relax a little. Now, we'll use the rod and reel to play him. You can pressure the fish by moving your rod back or to either side - just like the sweep, but slower. You will see the rod graphic get a bend in it - the bend shows you resisting his pull, it can be a little or a lot, depending how far you move it.

When you do that, one of 3 things happens - the crossbar stays put, it goes up or it goes down. If it stays in place or goes down, hold the LMB and pull straight back. If it starts to move up though, the fish is running. You can do 3 things to stop his escape. Move the rod left, right or back, use the LMB and/or use the 'space bar' to weaken it. In most cases, you'll do all three at some point during the fight.

Example: Hook fish. Point rod tip at the fish and lower it. Pull rod slightly to the side and click LMB a time or two. Crossbar still going up, inner gauge moves to yellow. Point rod back at fish and lower it again but this time tap the space bar. This bleeds off some energy and your gauges could move down. If they do, use rod movement and click the LMB to play the fish.

If the crossbar is still moving away, try this: Point rod at fish, rapidly click (I call it 'SpamKlik') the LMB. The trick is to click as fast as you are able to do it. Watch the crossbar and if it starts moving down, add some more bend to the rod and keep spamkliking. When the crossbar nears the bottom of the gauge, try pulling straight back hard and hold the LMB. It might come right in.

If it's still getting away, point back at the fish and spamklik while HOLDING the space bar down. This will make a difference. If the crossbar comes down, release the space bar. If the gauge doesn't go up, you can then play the fish like normal, if it's still gettin' away, repeat this 'til you wear him down.

Using the space bar takes Energy from you and the fish. You can replace your energy one of two ways - drink some of the energy drinks you'll get as rewards for doing this or that (or buy with gold) OR use the fish you caught to gain some back. When you land the fish you have a choice, sell or release. Releasing it (click the little lightning bolt under the fish picture) restores some energy to you - bigger fish restore more than little ones. So when you tie into a monster, you could get a bunch of the energy you used up with the space bar right back when you land him and let him go. (Find your energy in the top right corner, click on it and it takes you to where you can use/buy energy to replenish)

Be smart with using the space bar. You don't have to hold it down the whole time you reel in your fish. The less you use it, the less energy you'll have to replace. Use it - coupled with mad spamkliking - to get the crossbar moving down then let it go.

You can nail some nice fish with weaker gear if you use the spamklik/spacebar combo wisely.

Note: There's another good reason for using the fish you catch to replenish your energy instead of drinking up the energy juice. At level 10, you are able to use BOTTLES of energy drink to buff your gear while fighting fish. You can do this up to 4 times, raising your gear strength in 25% increments to a max of 100% (or double what your unbuffed gear value is). This is a VERY good thing. Save your energy drinks so you can land some of the monster fish you'll run into.

There are, again, some good manuals that cover gear improvement. These are my thoughts about buffing your rod. *choke*

As you use your gear, you'll accumulate points ('star points') that can be used to increase the capabilities of your equipment. You can use a max of 25 points for each rod you own/use. Note: Bigger fish give you more progress toward star points.

How?

With your bait/lure OUT of the water, click on the gear pic at the bottom left. You'll come to a page that shows what you own. Each time a rod gets used, it gets star points that eventually allow you to improve your gear. There's a gauge bar that increases and when it maxes out, you'll see a number right at the beginning of it. Above that are 5 categories in which you may place what points you have accumulated.

You can put points in any of the 5, but remember - you only get 25 total. There are 50 possible places to put those 25 points. You can put them where you like.

Here's an idea. Since all of your advancement in the game comes from catching fish, time is important. The longer you have a bait in the water, the faster you can progress. The faster you can reel a fish in, the more time you'll be able to put baits/lures in the water.

Try buffing your gear like this: With your first few points, buff fishline, then reel, then rod. You'll get an increase in lots of important ways - fish tire faster, your initial 'jerk' will be more effective, your gear will be more resistant, etc. The big gain is time, though. Stronger gear equals less time spent tryin' to land that critter. You can see what values have increased by clicking the 'information' tab under your rod. That page will show you what your basic equipment's values are (the black print) and what your new values (red print) are.

The other two categories you can put points into are terminal tackle and luck. Buffing terminal tackle gives you a benefit for spinning gear (rods using lures instead of baits) of having your lures last longer. That's a good thing, too. It does other stuff, but that's the important one. If you are going to use lures, keep this in mind.

Luck is worth putting some points into.

If you don't know how you should improve your gear, look at what others have done. At every waterway you'll have info in the chat box. Click on one of the fisherpeople (see? I can be politically correct.) The gear they're using now will be displayed and you can look it over and see how they've allocated the star points they've gotten.

That's it for this section. Look for the manual 'Rod Improvent' in the Guides for more.

To buy baits and lures and different rods and energy drinks and repair your gear and...well, you get the idea - you need money, in this case, silver.

One of the really good things about this game is that you don't HAVE to spend real money to get goodies. Spending money to buy gold simply saves you time. But the game will reward you with what you need and it's good about doing so. You can - and will - earn gold and silver in a variety of ways.

Land a good fish? Sell him. Land a bunch of not-so-good fish? Sell them, too! Keep an eye on Achievements and work them hard when you get close to a payout level, they'll pay you in gold, silver, energy drinks and such. Enter the Competitions, enter the Tournaments.

And, you can make Fish Soup!

Huh?

Fish Soup is a cool little mini-game that pays you to play. It works like this: Each batch of soup will take 3 hours to make. You get the ingredients by fishing but there's a catch. (no pun intended)

You will earn more by catching the largest number of DIFFERENT fish to put in the pot.
Here's how. Click the fish soup icon on the right side (it's just above the gold Tournament thingie). Click on the soup pot ('start') and go catch some fish. Here's where it gets interesting. You want lots of different fish and it helps if they're big.

Try this: Each bait you use will catch different fish according to what it is - live baits or grains, which hook you choose (on the bait screen there are 3 different hook sizes for each water level) and which of the 3 levels of the water column you use - surface, middle and bottom. Note: Not every bait can be used with every hook size. You have to experiment.

Now, start fishing. Toss live bait at the surface, grains at the bottom, exotic baits in the middle of the water column (or however you'd like - the goal is to catch different fishies). Select a bait, hook and water area then check the Expert tab at the top. It'll show you what species can be expected with the combo you've chosen. Catch ONE! Just one with each combo. If you're lucky, you'll have a different fish for each water level/bait combo. Caution! Some of these fish are gluttons and will eat ANYthing. You can catch the same type of fish on both live and grain baits. You don't want that, your Fish Soup reward depends on DIFFERENT fish being added. Later on, after you buy a spinning rod, you can use lures, too. It's not too much to hope for to get 3 or 4 different fish out of a single location. Then you just move to a new location and do the same thing all over again. Your soup's reward potential will continue to increase until you catch a fish that you've caught before. The more areas you have to fish, the better your chances of making better soup.

Once you've caught a repeat fishy, your soup starts cooking. You'll get an immediate silver reward and a few hours later, the main reward - could be gold, silver, pearls or some combo of these.

No particular subject matter, just some things that I learned while playing.

Watch your Achievements. Each time you catch a fish, before deciding to sell or let it go, look at the Achievements on the left side. When you're close to completing one, work it for the reward. In the beginning of your adventure much of the silver, gold, pearls and energy goodies that will make things more fun come from completion of the Achievements. (You should also look in the Achievements tab, too. It will not only show you what you need to complete it, but the reward for doing so.)

At each location, check the locks. You open new areas to fish by unlocking'em. Click on the lock and it'll tell you what you need to open it. Could be x number of fish, total pounds of a fish type or the star value of a fish type.

Learn to cast manually. Click the question mark at the top left of the screen, choose options and then choose manual casting. It'll take a couple dozen casts to get the hang of it, with a hundred or so casts, you'll be able to spot place your bait/lure. Later, after a few gear upgrades, your cast range will improve and you'll find little nooks and crannies that may surprise you with what's in them. This is especially true when you're using spinning gear and lures.

Work a hot bite. If the pescados are goin' nuts over what you've tossed at them, keep it up. Work the area over at different cast ranges, different depths, different hook sizes. Exploit the hell out of a hot bite.

Save your Energy drinks. Mentioned elsewhere, but can't stress it enough. Stockpile them during the early levels. Use fish caught to replenish energy. Use the drinks (after level 10) to buff your equipment during a fish fight with a monster. Could be the difference between landing it and cussing so much your dog looks at you like you're nuts. Note: Pay really close attention to how much energy you use - it's addictive. Use the space bar carefully. It may take a little longer to land one, but spamkliking the hell out of a fish, along with using rod tension will save you energy.

Use your pearls. Pearls show up all of the time. Use them to get uncommon baits, silver, gold, all sorts of stuff. As far as I know, there isn't a reason to stockpile them. I do NOT know this for sure. I do know that using the pearls immediately made the game more fun for me.

Don't ask me what the red disco ball-lookin' lure is. When you cash in pearls, one of the potential rewards is a disco ball. I haven't found any use for it, anywhere, except the Market where it's listed as a lure. (The description is in Cyrillic, I think, and I've never tried to translate it) When I have 10 of'em, I sell them at the Market for 2 gold. It takes a day or two. I have a feeling they're more useful than that - you get a LOT of them - but if anyone knows for sure, I'd really like to hear about it.