The Old Pike is a 1,000 HP mini-boss summoned by the $40 Beginner Boss Lure on Island 2. Stats, the 50/50 split, ammo math and the real profit per lure.
How to Fish Old Pike: The 1,000 HP Money Fight on Island 2
Buy the Beginner Boss Lure for $40 from the Island 2 (Forest) shop, cast it into open water, and half the time you get The Old Pike: 1,000 HP, 25 contact damage and a base value of $80. It has the smallest health pool of any boss in How to Fish, and it is the only boss-tier body you can summon before the story moves you off the Forest.
- Bait: Beginner Boss Lure, $40, always consumed
- Summon split: 50% The Old Pike, 50% Sunfish
- Stats: 1,000 HP, 25 contact damage, $80 base value, 180-second timer
- Profit: about +$40 raw or +$80 cooked per successful cast
How to Summon It
Buy the lure on the Forest
The Beginner Boss Lure sits in the Island 2 shop at $40, unlocked by finishing the Lighthouse and sailing to the Forest.
Cast it into open water
Equip the lure with your fishing rod and cast from the shoreline. The bite window is 1 to 3 seconds, the same as the regular Beginner Lure and the slowest of the boss lures, so you will see the bobber go under in time to react. Reel, land it on dry ground, and the health bar and escape timer appear together.
The 50/50 you cannot control
The lure's weight table holds exactly two creatures, weighted 10 and 10, and the bait is consumed on the single cast - the data lists a 100% loss chance. Every attempt costs $40 and every attempt is a coin flip.
| Creature | Chance | HP | Contact damage | Base value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Old Pike | 50% | 1,000 | 25 | $80 |
| Sunfish | 50% | 1,500 | 0 | $50 |
Both outcomes are profitable; only one fights back.
The $3 lure does not summon it
The ordinary Beginner Lure ($3) hooks a similar-looking fish, but not this one. Its nine-species pool is Cod, Pike, Piranha, Triggerfish, Goby, Salmon, Goldfish, Perch and Sunfish - The Old Pike is absent. The cheap lure gives you the ordinary Pike at 80 HP, 0 damage and $12, and the fish location list keeps the two apart.
Stock two or three lures per shop trip. The $40 price is not the bottleneck; the sail back to the shop between attempts is.
The Old Pike Stats
| Stat | Value | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Health | 1,000 HP | The lowest boss-tier pool in the game |
| Contact damage | 25 | About a fifth of a fresh player's health per hit |
| Base value | $80 | Before weight rolls and cooking |
| Fight timer | 180 seconds | The white bar empties and it escapes |
| Food value | 60 fullness, 25 HP | A weaker heal than the Sunfish |
| Jump force | 3.0 | Lower and slower than the Sunfish's 5.0 |
The 1,000 HP pool is the smallest health bar attached to a boss in the game, and that is what makes this fight cheap to repeat.
Official source: How to Fish on Steam - official store page with patch history and community hub
Contact damage decides whether you can stand your ground:
| Creature | Contact damage | How it feels |
|---|---|---|
| The Old Pike | 25 | Punishes standing still |
| Giant Piranha | 32 | Punishes greed |
| Blue Shark | 36 | Punishes bad positioning |
| Tuna | 40 | Punishes everything |
| Bing Bong | 75 | Punishes existing |
The Fight
Solo: ranged, patient, boring in the best way
25 contact damage rules out the knife. At base knife damage (16) you would need 63 hits while eating 25 damage every time it lands on you. Bring a gun.
| Weapon | Price | Base damage | Hits to remove 1,000 HP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brass Knuckles | $24 | 5 | 200 |
| Knife | $45 | 16 | 63 |
| Pistol | $50 | 25 | 40 shots |
| Shotgun | $150 | 3 per pellet | 334 pellets |
| SMG | $650 | 24 | 42 |
| Sniper Rifle | $3,800 | 200 | 5 shots |
| Dynamite | $25 | 200 | 5 sticks |
The realistic Island 2 loadout is the Pistol ($50) or the Shotgun ($150). With shop upgrades, a pistol at 160 damage needs 7 shots and a shotgun at 28 damage per pellet needs about 36 pellets. Explosives kill it in five sticks, but that is $125 of dynamite against an $80 fish, so only use them if you already carry dynamite.
Three habits carry the fight:
- Strafe, do not stand. Contact damage is applied by touch, so lateral movement removes nearly all incoming damage.
- Reload behind distance. A 180-second timer is generous for 1,000 HP; back off and reload instead of panic-firing.
- Keep away from the waterline. Fighting with your back to deep water is how players lose the body rather than the fight.
This is also the best practice target in the game: real contact damage, but a small health pool, so you can rehearse strafing and timer management before a 32-damage piranha tests the same skills. The best weapon guide covers what to upgrade for those fights.
Cook it and read the multiplier before selling. A cooked Old Pike is worth about $120 at average weight; a burnt one is worth $8. Pull it off the grill the moment the number hits 1.5x.
Co-op
In co-op the 1,000 HP pool evaporates. Two players with pistols finish it in about 20 shots total. Settle three things before the cast: who buys the lure (it is consumed on one cast, so one player carries the $40), who takes the body ($80 split four ways is small, but it matters to someone saving for a shotgun), and that the explosives stay holstered - with friendly fire disabled your own dynamite still kills you, as patch 1.0.11 states, and the Pike does not need explosives to die. Lobbies hold up to 8 players since patch 1.0.4; the boss list shows where real group content starts.
What It Drops and What It Is Worth
The Old Pike drops no unique trophy and no meat. That is not a bug. The only trophy items in the game data - Albatross Head, GiantPiranhaSkeleton, Pufferfish Fin, Spidercrab Shell, Whale Fin - are worth $0 because they are quest items you hand to NPCs rather than sell, and the meat items that exist (AlbatrossMeat $1,000, WhaleMeat $5,000, PufferfishMeat $200, PiranhaMeat $25, CrabMeat $10) have no pike entry.
The loot is therefore the fish: $80 base value, run through the two multipliers every creature uses.
Sale value = base value x random weight x cooking multiplier
- Random weight is a gaussian draw with a mean of 1.0 and a standard deviation of 0.15, clipped between 0.25 and 1.75.
- Cooking is 1.0 raw, 1.5 cooked, 0.1 burnt. A $120 cooked Pike becomes an $8 burnt Pike, which is the expensive mistake here.
- At maximum weight and cooked the ceiling is 80 x 1.75 x 1.5, about $210; at minimum weight raw the floor is about $20.
Food value is 60 fullness and 25 HP, weaker than the Sunfish's 100 and 100, so sell this one rather than carry it. Log it in your collection book if the entry is still missing.
Is It Worth Farming?
The per-lure maths, using base values before weight and cooking:
| Outcome | Chance | Base value | Net after the $40 lure |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Old Pike | 50% | $80 | +$40 |
| Sunfish | 50% | $50 | +$10 |
| Expected per cast | 100% | $65 | +$25 |
Both outcomes cooked to 1.5x at average weight:
| Outcome | Chance | Cooked value | Net after the $40 lure |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Old Pike | 50% | $120 | +$80 |
| Sunfish | 50% | $75 | +$35 |
| Expected per cast | 100% | $97.50 | +$57.50 |
In favour: both outcomes are profitable, the Pike dies fast to a pistol, and the $40 lure is easy to re-buy at the Island 2 shop. As a repeatable Forest activity it beats fishing Cod at $6 and Salmon at $14, and the money guide treats this island as the first stage where boss summons out-earn casual fishing.
Against: the absolute numbers stay small. Twenty casts an hour projects to roughly $500 raw or $1,150 cooked on expected value, and thirty casts to about $750 or $1,725 - arithmetic projections rather than measured rates, because they assume no sail time back to the shop and no failed timers. The $1 Leech Bait meanwhile summons an $11,000 Giant Piranha. Farming the Old Pike funds your first shotgun; it does not fund a Sniper Rifle.
A practical stopping rule: farm it while a pistol upgrade or the shotgun is your next purchase, then move on. Keep two lures in the bag so a failed timer does not force a shop trip, and cook before selling.
Official source: How to Fish patch notes on Steam - official announcements covering the 1.0.4 lobby size, the 1.0.10 loot rules and the 1.0.12 balance changes
Stats verified against the game's creature files; patch details from the official How to Fish news feed and the SteamDB app record. Developer: Dazed Games.
FAQ
What bait summons The Old Pike in How to Fish?
The Beginner Boss Lure, $40, from the Island 2 (Forest) shop: a 50/50 split between The Old Pike and the Sunfish. The lure is consumed on every cast.
How much HP does The Old Pike have?
1,000 HP with a 180-second escape timer and 25 contact damage. It is the lowest-health boss-tier creature in the game.
Is The Old Pike the same as a normal Pike?
No. The ordinary Pike is a common Forest catch with 80 HP, 0 damage and a $12 base value. The Old Pike is a separate boss creature at 1,000 HP, 25 contact damage and $80, summoned only by the $40 boss lure.
Is farming The Old Pike worth it?
At the margin, yes. A cast costs $40 and returns an $80 fish, so a direct hit nets about $40 raw or $80 cooked, and the Sunfish half is profitable too. It is reliable Forest income, but the ceiling is low next to later lures.
Can The Old Pike kill you quickly?
Not quickly, but it does not need to. At 25 damage per contact, four or five hits end a player who has not upgraded health or inventory slots.
Does The Old Pike drop anything special?
No trophy and no meat. The five trophies in the game are worth $0 because they are quest items, and none comes from this fish. Its value is the body: $80 base, up to roughly $210 with a maximum weight roll and a cooked multiplier.
Related Guides
- Bait Guide: Every Lure Tier - the weight tables behind the 50/50 summon split
- How to Fish Sunfish - the other half of the same coin flip, and why it pays less
- Forest Island Guide - the island that sells the lure and hosts the fight
- All Fish Locations - how the ordinary Pike differs from the boss version
- Best Weapon Guide - the right gun for 1,000 HP and 25 contact damage
- All Bosses Guide - every boss ranked by health and damage
More How to Fish Guides
How to Fish has no console build, so there is nothing to cross: Steam PC, Deck and GeForce NOW players share the same 8-player lobbies. Co-op facts for 2026.
Desert Island guide: the grill master's shark, the tourist's endangered creature, SMG attachment shopping, and beating the Pufferfish.
How to get drip rainbow creatures in How to Fish: what they are, where they spawn, how the Island 4 slot machine turns them into legendary weapon skins.
Dynamite does 200 explosion damage per stick in How to Fish — what that one-shots, how many sticks each boss needs, and the patch 1.0.11 self-damage rule.
The Fishipedia completion guide for How to Fish: logging every species, rare variant and drip entry with a checklist order that avoids wasted island trips.
Forest Island guide: the five-leech quest and special bait, where guns unlock, the girl's big yummy fish, and the Giant Piranha fight.
How to beat the Giant Piranha in How to Fish: the $1 Leech Bait summon chain, 2,500 HP solo tactics, and what patch 1.0.12 did and did not change.
Every island in How to Fish in unlock order — Lighthouse, Forest, Desert, Rocks, Military Volcano — with the boss trophies that gate each one.