The Sunfish is a 1,500 HP mini-boss summoned by the $40 Beginner Boss Lure on Island 2. Exact stats, the 50/50 summon split, and the honest profit math.
How to Fish Sunfish: The 1,500 HP Mini-Boss That Pays $50
Buy the Beginner Boss Lure from the Island 2 (Forest) shop for $40, cast it into open water, and you have a 50% chance of hooking the Sunfish. The other 50% is The Old Pike. The Sunfish has 1,500 HP, deals 0 contact damage, and its body sells for a base value of $50 - the tankiest creature $40 can summon and the cheapest boss-tier payout in the game.
- Bait: Beginner Boss Lure, $40, consumed on every cast
- Summon split: 50% Sunfish, 50% The Old Pike, not selectable
- Stats: 1,500 HP, 0 contact damage, $50 base value, 180-second timer
- Backup route: the $3 Beginner Lure also rolls Sunfish, at 1.8% per hook
- Verdict: a collection entry and a 100 HP heal, not a money farm
How to Summon It
Where the lure comes from
The Beginner Boss Lure is an Island 2 shop item at $40, available once you finish the Lighthouse and reach the Forest. No NPC or quest marker points at the Sunfish, and the game never explains what the lure summons until something enormous bites.
The 100% consumption rule
Regular lures sometimes survive a cast; every boss lure is consumed on use, with a 100% loss chance in the data. One cast equals $40, with no refund if the fight goes badly.
The coin flip
The lure's weight table holds exactly two entries, weighted 10 and 10: a straight 50/50, with no way to influence the roll through spot, rod or timing.
| Lure | Cost | Summons | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Empty Beer Can | $8 | Spider Crab 100% (quest item) | Island 1 |
| Leech Bait | $1 | Giant Piranha 100% (quest item) | Island 2 |
| Beginner Boss Lure | $40 | Sunfish 50% / The Old Pike 50% | Island 2 shop |
| Standard Boss Lure | $280 | Blue Shark 100% | Island 3 |
| Coconut | $350 | Bing Bong 100% | Island 3 |
| Professional Boss Lure | $1,200 | Tuna 100% | Island 4 |
| Scientific Boss Lure | $5,800 | Goblin Shark 100% | Island 5 |
The bite window is 1 to 3 seconds, the slowest of the boss lures. The bait tier breakdown has the rest.
The 1.8% Beginner Lure route
The regular Beginner Lure costs $3, and its nine-species pool includes the Sunfish at a weight of 1.0 out of 57 - the 1.8% figure printed in the game data. That is roughly 56 casts per Sunfish, so treat it as a windfall rather than a farm. You will cast Beginner Lures anyway for Cod, Pike and Salmon income, and occasionally a 1,500 HP body surfaces out of shallow water.
The Beginner Lure also has a 35% chance of being lost after a cast, so $3 is not a clean per-hook price. Budget by the session, not by the fish.
Sunfish Stats
| Stat | Value | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Health | 1,500 HP | Above The Old Pike (1,000) and Spider Crab (750) |
| Contact damage | 0 | It cannot hurt you by touching you |
| Base value | $50 | Before weight rolls and cooking |
| Fight timer | 180 seconds | The white bar empties and it escapes |
| Food value | 100 fullness, 100 HP | The best food value among the Forest catches |
| Jump force | 5.0 | Higher and faster than The Old Pike's 3.0 |
The 1,500 HP pool says boss; the $50 price tag says trash fish. Both are true.
Official source: How to Fish on Steam - official store page, patch history and community hub
For scale, compare it with the bodies around it:
| Creature | HP | Contact damage | Base value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pike (the ordinary one) | 80 | 0 | $12 |
| Sunfish | 1,500 | 0 | $50 |
| The Old Pike | 1,000 | 25 | $80 |
| Blue Shark | 2,300 | 36 | $300 |
| Giant Piranha | 2,500 | 32 | $11,000 |
That last row is the perspective check: a quest bait costing $1 summons a fish worth $11,000, while a $40 shop lure has a 50% shot at a fish worth $50.
The Fight
Solo
Nothing in this fight can damage you. Contact damage is 0, so knife range is genuinely safe, and the only enemies are the 180-second timer and your own damage output.
| Weapon | Price | Base damage | Hits to remove 1,500 HP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brass Knuckles | $24 | 5 | 300 |
| Knife | $45 | 16 | 94 |
| Pistol | $50 | 25 | 60 shots |
| Shotgun | $150 | 3 per pellet | 500 pellets |
| SMG | $650 | 24 | 63 |
| Sniper Rifle | $3,800 | 200 | 8 shots |
| Dynamite | $25 | 200 | 8 sticks |
Eight sticks of dynamite is $200 of explosives to kill a $50 fish. Explosives work; the economics do not. The sane Island 2 answer is the Pistol or the Shotgun, both of which you buy anyway for the leech chain. With shop upgrades, a Knife at 120 damage needs 13 hits and a Pistol at 160 damage needs 10 shots, both inside 180 seconds.
Because the Sunfish deals zero contact damage, this is the safest place in the game to test a new weapon's damage per second. You cannot die learning how a gun behaves.
The escape bar drains from the moment it bites. If it empties, the Sunfish escapes and the $40 lure is gone.
Co-op
Co-op changes the speed of this fight but not the danger, because there is none. Two players do roughly double damage against a 1,500 HP pool on a 180-second clock, and a low-level friend can hit it with Brass Knuckles and never take a point of damage. Settle two things first: who buys the lure (it is consumed on the single cast, and a second caster starts a second fight rather than joining yours) and who takes the body (a player still missing the entry should get it before it is eaten or sold). Lobbies hold up to 8 players since patch 1.0.4, but this fight never needs more than two. The boss overview shows where it sits next to the story fights.
What It Drops and What It Is Worth
The Sunfish has no unique trophy and no meat entry, and that is not a bug. The five trophy items in the game data - Albatross Head, GiantPiranhaSkeleton, Pufferfish Fin, Spidercrab Shell, Whale Fin - are all listed at $0 worth because they are quest items rather than merchandise, and the only meat items (AlbatrossMeat $1,000, WhaleMeat $5,000, PufferfishMeat $200, PiranhaMeat $25, CrabMeat $10) include no Sunfish fillet.
So the drop is the fish, priced by the formula 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, so two Sunfish can sell for different amounts.
- Cooking is 1.0 raw, 1.5 cooked and 0.1 burnt; overcook it and you destroy 90% of its value.
- The ceiling is a maximum-weight cooked Sunfish at 50 x 1.75 x 1.5, about $131.
The better reason to keep one is food. Eating it restores 100 fullness and 100 HP, better than The Old Pike's 60 and 25 and far above the ordinary Pike's 50 and 24, making it a reasonable emergency heal on the Forest.
Is It Worth Farming?
The per-lure arithmetic, using base values before weight rolls:
| Outcome | Chance | Base value | Net after the $40 lure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunfish | 50% | $50 | +$10 |
| The Old Pike | 50% | $80 | +$40 |
| Expected per cast | 100% | $65 | +$25 |
The same table with both fish cooked to 1.5x at average weight:
| Outcome | Chance | Cooked value | Net after the $40 lure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunfish | 50% | $75 | +$35 |
| The Old Pike | 50% | $120 | +$80 |
| Expected per cast | 100% | $97.50 | +$57.50 |
The lure is not a scam: expected value is positive on both sides of the coin flip, and the entry fee is the lowest of any boss lure. The problem is scale.
- The numbers are tiny. Roughly $25 raw or $57.50 cooked per cast, at a stage where the Pufferfish sells for $12,000. Farm the money routes first.
- Targeting the Sunfish is a losing bet. Half your casts hand you The Old Pike, and chasing the 1.8% roll with $3 lures means about 56 casts - roughly $170 of lures as a floor before the 35% loss chance pushes it higher.
- Nothing is refundable. A failed timer costs the full $40 and returns nothing.
Fight it when you want the entry logged, want a 100 HP heal in your pocket, or are already on the Forest with $40 spare. Do not build a farming loop around it, and if you cook it, pull it off the grill at 1.5x - a burnt Sunfish would have been worth more sold raw.
Official source: How to Fish patch notes on Steam - official announcements, including the 1.0.12 rebalance notes and the last pre-content bugfix patch
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 catches the Sunfish in How to Fish?
The Beginner Boss Lure, $40, from the Island 2 (Forest) shop: 50% Sunfish, 50% The Old Pike. The $3 Beginner Lure can also hook one at 1.8%.
How much HP does the Sunfish have?
1,500 HP with a 180-second escape timer, more than The Old Pike (1,000) and the Spider Crab (750) but well under the Giant Piranha (2,500).
Can the Sunfish hurt you?
No. Its contact damage is 0, so touching it cannot hurt you, and the only way to lose is letting the timer run out.
Is the Sunfish worth the $40 lure?
Barely, and only in expected-value terms. A Sunfish sells for $50 base, so a direct hit nets about $10 raw or $35 cooked; half the time you get The Old Pike at $80 instead, which is better. Treat it as a cheap boss encounter, not income.
Can I get a Sunfish without the boss lure?
Yes, by accident. The $3 Beginner Lure includes the Sunfish in its nine-species table at 1.8%, so one turns up occasionally while you farm Cod, Pike and Salmon. Expect roughly one every 56 hooks - far too slow to farm deliberately.
Does the Sunfish drop a trophy or meat?
Neither. There is no Sunfish trophy entry and no Sunfish meat entry in the game data, and the five trophies that do exist are worth $0 because they are quest items. Its value is the $50 body, plus 100 HP and 100 fullness if you eat it.
Related Guides
- Bait Guide: Every Lure Tier - the weight tables behind the 50/50 split and the 1.8% roll
- How to Fish Old Pike - the other half of the same $40 coin flip, and the better payout
- All Bosses Guide - every boss ranked by health and contact damage
- All Fish Locations - which waters hold which species, including the Forest
- How to Fish Money Fast - what to farm instead if $50 a fight is too slow
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.