Ultimate How to Fish Speedrun Guide: Fast Routing & Trickshots

We have all been there. You are forty-five minutes into a flawless Any% pace. You just reeled in a legendary boss variant, launched it perfectly into the stratosphere, and executed a flawless 360 no-scope with your freshly upgraded sniper rifle. The killscore multiplier flashes on screen—enough cash to instantly buy your passage to the final island. And then, out of nowhere, a rogue seagull swoops down, snags your bloody prize, and flies off into the sunset. Run dead. Keyboard smashed. Welcome to the chaotic reality of attempting a How to Fish speedrun.

TL;DR: The Short Answer

If you are looking to optimize your How to Fish speedrun, you must abandon traditional fishing simulation tactics and treat the game like an arcade shooter economy. Here is the core loop for a world-record pace:

• Skip the Grind: Never sell base-value fish. Always launch them and hit quick-scopes or 360 no-scopes to stack the killscore multiplier.
• Weapon Rushing: Upgrade from fists to the handgun immediately, then stockpile cash for the sniper rifle to maximize single-shot trickshot values.
• Seagull Management: Do not ignore the birds. Bait seagulls into stealing low-value catches, then trickshot the seagulls themselves for bonus revenge cash.
• Casino Skips: Use the Fish Casino only when you have a massive surplus or are facing a forced reset. It is a run-killer if used as a crutch.
• Boss Melts: Pre-plant dynamite on boss spawn locations and trigger it with a sniper shot the moment the boss breaches the water.

Early Game Economy: Escaping the Fists

The first ten minutes of a How to Fish speedrun dictate the pace for the entire run. You start with absolutely nothing but your bare hands, forced to punch your aquatic prey into submission. This phase is notoriously slow, and minimizing your time here is critical.

The Common Mistakes

The most frequent error new runners make is over-fishing on the starter island. They reel in dozens of low-tier shrimp and basic fish, punch them to death on the deck, and slowly accumulate enough cash for the first weapon. This wastes precious minutes. Another massive mistake is failing to utilize the launch mechanic early on. Even with fists, you can launch a fish.

Alternative Methods

Instead of grinding raw volume, focus on targeted value.

• The Air-Melee Method: Reel in the fish, launch it, and jump after it to execute an air-melee punch. This grants a minor “Airborne Kill” multiplier, increasing the fish’s value by 1.5x. It requires timing, but halves the number of fish you need to catch to afford your first firearm.
• Co-op Division of Labor: If you are running a Co-op How to Fish speedrun, have one player constantly cast and reel, while the second player focuses entirely on juggling the fish in the air with punches to stack combo multipliers before the final blow.

Advanced Tips: Animation Canceling

Top-tier runners utilize a reeling animation cancel. The moment the fish breaches the water surface, quickly tap your “Equip Weapon” bind twice. This skips the heavy lifting animation and immediately transitions the fish into a launchable state. Mastering this frame-perfect trick shaves roughly two seconds off every single catch, which compounds massively over a two-hour run.

Mastering the Killscore Multiplier System

How to Fish is not really about fishing; it is a trickshot simulator disguised as a fishing game. The killscore multiplier is the beating heart of your economy. The more ridiculous the kill, the more cash you get.

The Common Mistakes

Players often panic when they launch a rare fish. Fearing they will miss the shot and the fish will land back in the water (resulting in a total loss of the catch), they opt for safe, grounded shots. A grounded kill offers a 1.0x multiplier. In a How to Fish speedrun, settling for a 1.0x multiplier is a guaranteed way to bleed time.

Alternative Methods

If you are not confident in your 360 no-scopes yet, you need to establish a reliable baseline trickshot that guarantees a minimum 2.5x multiplier.

• The Quick-Scope: Launch the fish straight up, wait for it to reach the apex of its trajectory (where its vertical velocity reaches zero for a split second), aim down sights for less than 0.5 seconds, and fire.
• The Double-Weapon Swap: Launch the fish, pull out your knife, swap to your handgun, and shoot. The game registers the rapid weapon swap as a “Stylish Execution,” granting a solid 2.0x boost without requiring chaotic camera spinning.

Advanced Tips: The 720 No-Scope Dynamite Juggle

For those pushing world record times, the ultimate money-maker is the explosive juggle. You launch a high-tier catch, toss a stick of dynamite into the air alongside it, perform a 720-degree mouse spin, and shoot the dynamite with a sniper rifle. The explosion kills the fish, stacking a “360,” “No-Scope,” “Explosive,” and “Collateral” multiplier all at once. This can turn a $500 fish into a $15,000 payload, instantly funding your late-game upgrades.

Optimal Weapon Pathing and Upgrades

You cannot perform high-tier trickshots without the right hardware. Upgrading your arsenal efficiently is what separates an amateur from a seasoned runner.

Before you finalize your routing, you need to know exactly which arsenal pieces yield the highest DPS and multiplier potential. Check out our comprehensive tier list on the Best Weapons in How to Fish: Rifles to Dynamite to optimize your mid-game purchases.

The Common Mistakes

Many players fall into the trap of buying the SMG or shotgun early. While these weapons are incredibly fun for unloading an entire clip into a shrimp, they are terrible for a How to Fish speedrun. Automatic weapons and spread weapons have an incredibly high chance of ruining trickshot multipliers because the game calculates the multiplier based on the final bullet that kills the fish. If a stray shotgun pellet hits the fish after your 360 spin ends, the multiplier resets.

Alternative Methods

Skip the automatic weapons entirely. Your purchase route should be strictly semi-automatic and high single-target damage.

• The Standard Route: Fists -> Handgun -> Laser Sight Upgrade -> Sniper Rifle -> Dynamite.
• The Melee-Only Meme Route: Some specialized speedruns focus on upgrading the knife. By sharpening the melee weapon to the max, you can dash-slice bosses. However, this is significantly slower than firearm routing due to the lack of airborne multipliers.

Advanced Tips: Ammo Management

Always upgrade your ammunition type before buying a completely new gun tier if you are strapped for cash. Upgraded ammunition on a basic handgun deals enough damage to one-shot mid-tier island fish, allowing you to maintain your fast-paced trickshot rhythm without dropping $10,000 on a new weapon frame.

Island Progression and Boss Routing

As you make more money, you navigate your boat to progressively harder islands. Each island is gated by a boss fight that must be cleared to progress the story and unlock the next zone.

The Common Mistakes

Speedrunners often try to clear every quest on an island before moving on. How to Fish is packed with side quests (like collecting rare variants of specific fish), but these are massive time sinks. Unless a quest specifically rewards a unique weapon attachment necessary for your route, ignore it.

Alternative Methods

Focus strictly on the boss summoning requirements. Usually, this involves catching a specific amount of local fish or achieving a certain total killscore.

• Forced Spawns: Instead of waiting for RNG to give you the high-tier fish needed to summon the boss, use specific bait combinations (bought cheaply at the island vendor) to force the boss to spawn minutes earlier than intended.

Advanced Tips: Boss Insta-Melts

Bosses in How to Fish have massive health pools and can easily drag a fight out for five minutes as they dive and breach. To bypass this, use the “Dynamite Pre-Plant” strat. Bosses always spawn in a fixed location relative to your boat. Drop four sticks of dynamite in the water at that exact coordinate. The moment the boss breaches, do a quick-scope on the dynamite. The resulting chain reaction will instantly deplete 90% of the boss’s health, allowing you to finish it off with a single sniper round.

The Fish Casino: Speedrun Savior or Run Killer?

The Fish Casino is the most controversial mechanic in a How to Fish speedrun. It allows you to gamble your hard-earned cash for a chance to multiply it instantly, potentially skipping entire islands worth of grinding.

The Common Mistakes

The “All-In” mentality. Runners get impatient, walk into the Fish Casino, and bet their entire run on a single roulette spin. If they lose, they have zero cash, no upgraded weapons, and are essentially soft-locked out of a competitive time.

Alternative Methods

Treat the casino as a supplementary tool, not a primary strategy.

• The 10% Rule: Only ever gamble 10% of your current cash stack. If you win, great, you just saved two minutes of fishing. If you lose, your run is still perfectly viable.
• The Casino Skip: The most consistent How to Fish speedrun routes avoid the casino entirely. RNG manipulation is incredibly difficult in this game, and relying on pure skill (trickshots) is mathematically safer than relying on digital dice.

Advanced Tips: Seed Manipulation

While still being heavily researched by the community, some runners believe the casino outcomes are tied to the number of fish you have killed on that specific island. By killing exactly 7 low-tier fish and entering the casino on a specific frame, you can allegedly force a winning hand in blackjack. Until this is fully verified, use it at your own risk.

Advanced Seagull Defense Tactics

Seagulls are the ultimate antagonists in How to Fish. They circle your boat and will dive-bomb to steal your catch the moment it leaves the water. In a speedrun, a stolen fish means lost time and lost money.

The Common Mistakes

Ignoring the seagulls until they are already diving. By the time you hear their distinct screech, it is usually too late. If you are mid-aim for a trickshot, the seagull will snatch the fish right out of your crosshairs.

Alternative Methods

Proactive clearing is mandatory.

• The Pre-Emptive Strike: Before casting your line for a high-value fish, look up and shoot any seagulls in the sky. They have a respawn timer of exactly 45 seconds. Clearing the skies gives you a guaranteed safe window to fish, launch, and trickshot without interference.

Advanced Tips: Weaponized Seagulls

Do not just shoot the seagulls normally. When a seagull dives for your fish, let it grab the fish. As it flies away, the seagull now carries the base value of the fish plus a “Thief Bounty” multiplier. Launch yourself off the boat, do a 360 spin in the air, and snipe the seagull. You will recover your fish’s value, get the thief bounty, and apply your trickshot multiplier to the entire sum. This “Revenge Trickshot” is one of the highest yielding economic moves in the game.

XMODhub: The Ultimate Speedrun Practice Tool

Let’s face reality: practicing a How to Fish speedrun is exhausting. You cannot easily practice the final boss or perfect your 720 no-scope dynamite juggles without playing through an entire 90-minute run just to get there. If you mess up the trickshot, you have to start a new save file. This is where XMODhub completely changes the game for dedicated runners.

Instead of burning hours on dead runs, XMODhub allows you to isolate and practice specific mechanics, acting as the ultimate training room. Need to practice the Fish Casino RNG routing? Give yourself infinite money. Want to learn the exact spawn coordinates of the final island boss? Toggle God Mode and Infinite Ammo to test different dynamite placements without penalty.

Getting your practice environment set up takes less than a minute:

1. Download and Install XMODhub: Grab the lightweight client from the official site and create your account.
2. Auto-Detect How to Fish: Launch the game, then open XMODhub. The software will instantly recognize your game version and load the dedicated trainer overlay.
3. Toggle Cheats for Practice: Use the hotkeys to activate “Infinite Cash,” “Instant Reel-In,” or “Freeze Seagull Spawns.”

By using XMODhub to drill specific boss fights and trickshot timings, you will build the muscle memory required to execute them flawlessly when you do a legitimate, unmodded speedrun.

Download How to Fish Trainer Now

Speedrun Categories and Target Splits

When routing your How to Fish speedrun, understanding your pacing through split times is critical. You cannot simply fish intuitively; you must hit specific time benchmarks to ensure you are on a world-record pace. The community primarily focuses on the Any% category, which allows for all glitches, skips, and weapon paths to reach the final credits as fast as possible.

To help you track your progress, here is the optimal split sheet for a sub-1:15:00 run. If you fall more than three minutes behind these benchmarks, it is usually faster to reset the run entirely.

Essential Speedrun Glitches and Skips

Beyond pure routing, top-tier runners utilize minor engine exploits to shave off seconds. The most prominent is the Bait Duplication Glitch. By opening your inventory and dropping a piece of premium bait on the exact frame a seagull initiates its dive animation, the game gets confused. The bird steals a phantom bait, leaving your original item on the deck while still triggering the forced boss spawn mechanic. This completely eliminates the need to buy duplicate baits if a boss fight goes wrong, saving you thousands in your killscore multiplier economy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Verdict

Executing a flawless How to Fish speedrun is a beautiful, chaotic dance of precision aim, economic management, and bird defense. By ditching the early game grind, mastering the quick-scope and 360 no-scope multipliers, and routing your weapon upgrades directly toward high-damage sniper rifles, you will easily shave hours off your initial completion time. Remember, every fish is just a clay pigeon waiting to be shattered—treat them accordingly.

If the grind of practicing these frame-perfect trickshots is burning you out, do not hesitate to leverage modern tools. With support for over 5,000 titles—including similar indie management hits like Dave the Diver and Dredge—XMODhub provides the perfect sandbox to refine your routing, test casino theories, and perfect your boss melts without the frustration of ruined runs. Equip your sniper, watch the skies, and go get that PB.