How to Fish Secrets and Easter Eggs: 12 Things the Game Never Tells You

The three secrets players miss most are the hidden mini-bosses, the junk pickups that nobody bothers to collect, and BingBong. None of them get a quest marker. The mini-bosses only appear if you spend money on boss lures the shops never explain, the junk items sit in the internal data as real sellable objects worth $1 to $12, and BingBong is summoned by throwing a $350 coconut into the water. Below are twelve confirmed secrets, each with where it is, how to trigger it, and what it actually gives you.

1. Six Hidden Mini-Bosses the Story Never Mentions

The game data carries 12 boss-level stat blocks, and six of them are only reachable through boss lures that the story never points you toward. There is no dialogue, no marker, and no tutorial line telling you these creatures exist — you find them by spending bait money out of curiosity.

Every one of these boss lures is consumed 100 percent of the time, so a failed fight means buying another. The Sunfish and The Old Pike share a single $40 lure on a coin flip, which makes the cheapest boss summon in the game also the most random. The full boss guide ranks all twelve stat blocks side by side.

2. BingBong and the $350 Coconut

BingBong is a seventh hidden creature and the only one with its own dedicated bait. A $350 Coconut summons it with a 100 percent bite rate. It carries 2,000 HP, deals 75 contact damage — enough to end a mid-game run in three hits — and its body sells for about $300, which is less than the coconut cost. The payoff is the Fishipedia entry and the trophy, not the cash.

Community reports describe a second trigger: knock a coconut into the sea and reel it back in with the rod. We have not been able to verify that method on every build, so treat it as a community report rather than a documented mechanic. The BingBong guide covers the fight itself.

3. The Junk Items Nobody Picks Up

The internal item data contains a set of objects that are not fish, not bait and not quest items, and most players never realize they can be sold. They are real pickups with real values:

Two of these deserve a second look. Leeches are the Giant Piranha bait — the same pickup that sells for $4 is what the Forest girl's quest chain runs on, so selling them early can cost you a boss. And Badballs look like junk and behave like junk: the data lists a $3 value but a $1 sale price, the only item in the game with that gap.

4. The $10 Radar Next to the Lighthouse Keeper

An entire upgrade sits on the ground within sight of the first NPC and most players never pick it up. The radar costs $10, it sits beside the Lighthouse Keeper, and without it every coordinate reward an NPC gives you is an unreadable number. It is the cheapest purchase in the game by a wide margin, and later in the run it can be mounted permanently on the boat. The radar guide explains the full coordinate system.

5. The Beer Can That Summons a Crab

The economy's strangest bait chain starts with an $8 Empty Beer Can, which pulls a Spider Crab 100 percent of the time. Community walkthroughs describe the can entering the economy through the Lighthouse Keeper's beer: hand him a beer, keep the empty, use it as a lure. What is verifiable is the bait itself and the outcome — a guaranteed 750 HP boss with a $10,000 base value, the best money-per-cast item in the early game and the boss that drops the shell you hand in for boat keys.

Official source: How to Fish patch notes on Steam — the 1.0.10 and 1.0.11 entries document the water-wash cooking change and the friendly-fire explosive behavior listed below.

6. The Slot Machine That Eats Drip Creatures

The Reel of Fortune on Island 4 does not take coins. You throw a Drip creature — a rainbow-named rare variant — or a boss trophy into the hole above the machine, and only then does it spin. The payout is cosmetic: weapon, rod and boat skins. One detail matters in multiplayer: only the person who threw the creature gets the skin. Your teammates can supply the Drip creature and walk away with nothing. The casino guide covers the roulette odds and the skin machine side by side, and the Drip fish guide covers the variants.

7. Shotgun Rocket Jump

Community-reported. Players have shared clips of using a shotgun at close range to launch themselves upward across terrain. This is a physics behavior, not a designed mechanic: it is a community discovery, it depends on blast knockback, and it can stop working in any patch without notice. We are not listing a key combination because none is verified across versions. Try it in a private lobby, not in a run you care about.

8. The Boat Can Fly

Also community-reported. Clips circulate of boats reaching altitude through physics interactions at shorelines. Same caveats as the rocket jump: undocumented, dependent on engine behavior rather than game design, and quite possibly gone after the next update. Treat both as fun to test and unsafe to rely on.

9. Drip Creatures Respawn

Drip variants are infinitely renewable. They are not a one-time collectible and not a limited currency — they spawn again, which means the slot machine is a repeatable skin farm rather than a single-use quest reward. The practical implication is that you should never sell a Drip creature for its base value if you still want skins from the casino. The casino economy explains what drip creatures feed.

10. You Can Cook Your Weapons

Since patch 1.0.10, documented in the official Steam patch notes, weapons and tools can pick up the same cooking state as fish, and walking into water washes that state off. The consequence is easy to miss: a weapon cooked too long carries the burnt multiplier, and a burnt weapon is worth a fraction of a clean one. If you are selling old gear rather than upgrading it, check the item state first and rinse it in water before the sale. The money farming guide covers the cooking multipliers and the sale formula.

11. Friendly Fire Off Still Kills You With Your Own Explosives

Patch 1.0.11 documented this explicitly: when friendly fire is disabled, your own explosives still kill you. It is the single most expensive secret on this list because it is invisible. Crews assume the friendly-fire toggle makes them safe, then lose a run to their own dynamite at close range. The dynamite guide covers the blast radius and the throw ranges that keep you outside it.

12. The Run Ends in the Volcano, Not in the Health Bar

The final sequence is not finished when the last boss dies. The endgame chain runs through the military volcano on Island 5: use the quest Fish Bucket to summon the Bowhead Whale, hand in the whale fin to reach the Mutated Bowhead Whale, and then drag the whale into the volcano itself to complete the game. Players who kill the final boss and stop have not actually finished the story. The volcano island walkthrough covers the sequence in order.

Community-Reported Finds We Cannot Verify

Beyond the twelve items above, players share screenshots of things that are not in the creature or item data at all — land variants, odd visual spawns, and the occasional animal that has no business being on a fishing island. We list them as curiosities rather than targets. If the game files do not carry a value for it, selling or logging it may not be possible, and a patch can remove it without a note. Community clips aggregate on the Steam community guides hub, and build versions are tracked on SteamDB.

FAQ

How many bosses are in How to Fish?

The game data contains 12 boss-level stat blocks, from the 750 HP Spider Crab to the 38,000 HP Mutated Bowhead Whale. Six of them are hidden behind boss lures that the story never mentions, and BingBong is a seventh hidden fight with its own coconut bait.

What happens if you shoot dynamite?

Dynamite detonates when it touches water, sand or a boat deck, dealing 200 explosion damage to everything in the radius. Since patch 1.0.11 your own explosives still kill you even with friendly fire switched off, so a short throw into water you are standing in is lethal to you.

Is there a secret island?

No. The game ships with five islands, and no secret sixth island appears in the data or in any verified community report. The secrets are hidden creatures and pickups layered on the five islands.

Does How to Fish have cheats?

There are no official cheat codes or developer commands on the official store page. Mods and trainers exist, but they are third-party tools — the mods and trainers guide covers what is available and what it does to saves and multiplayer.

Can you fly the boat in How to Fish?

Community clips show boats reaching altitude through physics interactions at shorelines. It is a community-reported behavior rather than a designed feature, no verified input sequence exists across versions, and it may stop working after any patch.

Related Guides

• BingBong Boss Guide — the $350 coconut summon and the fight itself
• All Bosses Guide — every boss stat block in one place
• Radar and Coordinates Guide — the $10 pickup most players never see
• Drip Fish Guide — rainbow variants and what the casino does with them
• Volcano Island Walkthrough — the final chain, including the whale