Cozy Grove: A Complete Guide to Fishing

Cozy Grove is the latest Animal Crossing-like to hit the market, giving players the opportunity to camp out on an ever-expanding haunted island with a bunch of ghost bears (some of whom aren’t quite sure that they are, in fact, bears). It’s all good fun.

Just like in Animal Crossing, you will spend a great deal of your Cozy Grove time fishing. I’ve spent hours and hours fishing in this game — it might be my favorite thing to do — and I’ve compiled everything I know about how it works into this handy dandy guide.

One quick note: For this particular guide, I’m going to focus on how all of the mechanics work — there are tons of details that a lot of other guides are leaving out, and knowing about those will make you a much better fisher of fish. If you’re looking for a complete list of all 180 fish, I’ve got that in a different post.

Here’s a link to the complete list of fish in Cozy Grove.

If you’re here to learn more about the ins and outs of fishing in Cozy Grove, though, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s grab a rod and start casting!

The basics: how to fish in Cozy Grove

First off, you need a fishing rod. If you’ve just started the game, you can purchase one from Mr. Kit, the fox/bear thing who runs the general store. There will be a brief tutorial within your first few days on the island (Captain Billweather Scout is your bear — err… seagull?), but if you’re itching to get into it right away, here’s how it works.

You can equip the fishing rod by opening up your inventory menu and selecting it with the action button (X on PS4). Once it’s in your hand, you should see a bubble over your character’s head that has the fishing rod inside it. Now, all you have to do is go to the shore and cast into the water. You’ll cast by holding the R2 button (if you’re playing on PS4 like I am), and using the right stick to aim. There’s a meter that grows and shrinks, and this shows you the strength of your cast. A strong cast will travel further, while a weak cast won’t travel very far. Note that adjusting the right analog stick will change both the direction and the strength of a cast.

Once your bobber is in the water, fishing works pretty much exactly like fishing in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (though I should point out that you won’t need any bait here). Try to cast directly in front of a fish, then wait for the fish to nibble. Once the bobber goes down, press the action button to reel in the fish.

Once you’re holding the fish, press the action button again to put it in your inventory. If you don’t have any space for it, you’ll drop the fish on the ground. Don’t worry, you can clear out an inventory slot (by selling something or storing something in your camp storage) and come back for the fish. It should remain where you left it until you quit out of the application (and even then, the fish might still persist).

Donate your fish to Captain Billweather Snout

Captain Billweather Snout keeps a compendium called Book of Secrets, so the first time you find any new fish you should donate it. He’ll also give you rewards for finding new fish, so it’s well worth your while.

You can even look at stats for all of the fish you’ve caught, but I’ll get to that more later on. For now, just know that it’s very much worth your time to donate fish to Captain Snout whenever you can.

How to make money by fishing in Cozy Grove

Fishing is a good source of income. You can sell fish directly to Mr. Kit (shown above) for a small bit of Old Coins, but this isn’t the best way to make money fishing.

At the very least, you want to toss your fish into the fire at your camp to turn them into charred fishbones. Charred fishbones are more valuable than basic fish, and rarer fish will produce more bones, so you can increase your profit margin considerably if you simply burn your fish before selling them.

For example, a Spiteful Cusk is worth 100 Old Coins if you sell it as is. Burning it will produce three charred fishbones. Each set of fishbones is worth 50 Old Coins, so three will be worth 150. Simply by casting that one fish into the fire, you’ve increased your profit by 50 Old Coins. (Note that value isn’t always improved when burning legendary fish, but I have a much more thorough value breakdown in the next section of this guide.)

On top of this, fishbones can be crafted into numerous items. If you craft your bones into items, you can further increase your potential profits. One super-early-game item is the common log cabin fence. You can craft a stack of 20 of these for 3 charred fishbones and 3 softwood. You can turn around and sell that stack for 500 Old Coins. So now that 150-Old-Coin pile of fishbones is worth 500 Old Coins. (Note that three softwood is worth 60 Old Coins, so you’ll have to factor that in too, but even then, your raw materials are worth 210 Old Coins, while crafted they’re worth 500. The upgrade is a good one.)

Be smart with your fish. Don’t just sell them straight out.

Some notes on size and rarity

Okay, so now we’re going to really get into the weeds. Well, figuratively, because there actually aren’t weeds in the water in Cozy Grove. But you know what I mean. I think. (Do I even know what I mean at this point?)

Erm…

Anyway, there are several tiers of fish based on size, rarity, and how hard they are to catch. For size, you’ve got small, medium, and large. For rarity, you’ve got common, uncommon, rare, legendary, and unique. And for how hard they are to catch, you’ve got lazy and energetic (energetic has two tiers as well).

I’ll get to lazy and energetic in the next section of this guide. Before we get there, here’s a breakdown of fish by size/rarity and value:

• Small common fish
  • Will sell for 13 Old Coins
  • Can be burned into 1 charred fishbone (for a value of 50 Old Coins)
• Small uncommon fish
  • Will sell for 25 Old Coins
  • Can be burned into 2 charred fishbones (for a value of 100 Old Coins)
• Small rare fish
  • Will sell for 50 Old Coins
  • Can be burned into 3 charred fishbones (for a value of 150 Old Coins)
• Small legendary fish
  • Will sell for 125 Old Coins
  • Can be burned into 5 charred fishbones (for a value of 250 Old Coins)
• Medium common fish
  • Will sell for 25 Old Coins
  • Can be burned into 1 charred fishbone (for a value of 50 Old Coins)
• Medium uncommon fish
  • Will sell for 50 Old Coins
  • Can be burned into 2 charred fishbones (for a value of 100 Old Coins)
• Medium rare fish
  • Will sell for 100 Old Coins
  • Can be burned into 3 charred fishbones (for a value of 150 Old Coins)
• Medium legendary fish
  • Will sell for 250 Old Coins
  • Can be burned into 5 charred fishbones (for a value of 250 Old Coins)
• Large common fish
  • Will sell for 50 Old Coins
  • Can be burned into 2 charred fishbones (for a value of 100 Old Coins)
• Large uncommon fish
  • Will sell for 100 Old Coins
  • Can be burned for 3 charred fishbones (for a value of 150 Old Coins)
• Large rare fish
  • Will sell for 150 Old Coins
  • Can be burned for 4 charred fishbones (for a value of 200 Old Coins)
• Large legendary fish
  • Will sell for 300 Old Coins
  • Can be burned for 6 charred fishbones (for a value of 300 Old Coins)

I should also point out that common fish tend to be dull in color (usually blue and burgundy), uncommon fish tend to be bright green, rare fish tend to be bright blue, and legendary fish tend to be gold. This isn’t the case 100% of the time, but in my experience, it’s the case most of the time. Legendary and unique fish have icons that shine as well, and this does seem to be the case 100% of the time.

As far as unique fish, I’ve only caught four so far. They are rarer than legendary, and I’m not sure if there are any special conditions that need to be met in order to catch them. It doesn’t seem like it. Note that they’re incredibly rare, like Shiny Pokémon rare.

What do fish silhouettes mean?

Alright, so on top of those qualities, there’s also the fish’s energy level, or how hard it is to catch. Lazy fish will be super easy to catch, and you can toss the bobber right on top of them without bothering them. Energetic fish will be harder to catch — you’ll need to make sure the bobber is directly in front of them or they won’t bite, and if you cast on top of them, they’ll flee.

You can actually see a lot of this information just by looking at the fish’s silhouette in the water. You can see size (medium and large fish look really similar unless you compare them side by side). Lazy fish are chunkier, and energetic fish are thinner.

As I mentioned earlier, there are two tiers of energetic fish. One is thinner than the lazy fish, and the other is even thinner — almost needle-like. Some people are referring to the needle-like variety as “slippery” and those will be even harder to catch than your basic energetic fish (they’re easier to scare away and they require more precision). However, “slippery” fish are still tagged as “energetic” in Captain Snout’s Book of Secrets.

Oh, and I should point out that energy level (or difficulty) doesn’t affect rarity. These classifications work independent from one another.

Lastly, there’s another type of silhouette that’s just a plain oval. These operate similar to the lazy fish, but fishing them up will grant you an item instead of a fish. Usually it’s an essence of some sort, though I’ve also found branches this way.

How do you progress to rarer fish?

When you first start fishing, you can only catch small, lazy fish. As you fish more, however, you will begin to see other fish appear. I believe the order goes like this:

Small, lazy — small, energetic — medium, lazy — medium, energetic — small/medium, rare — small, medium, legendary — large, lazy — etc.

Note that at each step, you’re unlocking more fish. You will never lose access to lower-tier fish; your pool of available fish will keep growing.

So how do you progress to higher tiers? As far as I can tell, this is simply based on how many days you’ve played. You might need to acquire the fishing rod before the tiers begin advancing, but I’m not certain about this either. Based on everything I’ve seen, the only meaningful thing that upgrades your tier is which game day you’re on.

How do fishing seasons work?

Seasons in general are really weird in Cozy Grove. According to a developer post, your seasons are as follows:

• Winter – January, February
• Spring – April, May
• Summer – July, August
• Fall – October, November

As you can see, seasons are two months long, and there is a month-long transitional period between seasons.

Now, for fishing, spring and fall are actually broken into two seasons a piece, so you actually have six fishing seasons:

• Winter
• Early Spring
• Late Spring
• Summer
• Early Fall
• Late Fall

It gets even more confusing, because fish seasons don’t necessarily line up with the actual season, and there are always two active fishing seasons at a time. In April, for example, you can catch fish from winter and early spring, and in May and June, you can catch fish from early spring and late spring.

Here’s the complete breakdown of fishing seasons by month (I’ve also included this information in my complete list of fish):

• January – Late Fall, Winter
• February – Late Fall, Winter
• March – Winter, Early Spring
• April – Winter, Early Spring
• May – Early Spring, Late Spring
• June – Early Spring, Late Spring
• July – Late Spring, Summer
• August – Late Spring, Summer
• September – Summer, Early Fall
• October – Summer, Early Fall
• November – Early Fall, Late Fall
• December – Early Fall, Late Fall

Every season has 30 fish species, 10 in each size group. For every size (Small, Medium, and Large), you have one lazy fish and one energetic fish from each rarity group. So, for each size, the breakdown is as follows:

• Common, lazy
• Common, energetic
• Uncommon, lazy
• Uncommon, energetic
• Rare, lazy
• Rare, energetic
• Legendary, lazy
• Legendary, energetic
• Unique, lazy
• Unique, energetic

That’s 10 fish species. As I mentioned earlier, there are three size groups (Small, Medium, and Large), for a total of 30 fish species per season. With six seasons, that comes out to 180 fish species in total.

And as far as I can tell, time of day and weather don’t seem to impact your available fish selection.

How can I get more information about the fish that I caught?

Oh, and there’s a ton to know about every fish, but you can bring up all of this information super easily. If you log each new fish with Captain Billweather Snout, you can check his compendium (Book of Secrets) to see stats on every fish you’ve donated. Every fish has a tag cloud that contains information about rarity, size, and energy level.

The Orangespine shown above, for example, has the tags: legendary, fish, winter, tiny, and energetic. You can see this information for every single fish in the Book of Secrets, but only once you’ve donated that fish one time.

As I said in an earlier section, donate those fish!

Of course, you don’t need to keep running back to ol’ Captain Snout if you have the fish in your inventory. You should be able to bring up this same information if you simply move the cursor over any fish in your inventory. For fish that aren’t currently in your inventory, though, Book of Secrets is your Bible.