Great tips! Another way to get crazy fishing money without mastery is to have a fish smoker and bait maker, catch a decently expensive fish like catfish or sturgeon, and make bait to catch specifically those fish. If you smoke all your fish and have the fisher, angler, and artisan professions you can make pretty great money if you fish all day. I feel like 1.6 made fishing so much more fun and viable past just the early game, the new bait especially was a very welcome change.
Fishing was already great in the early game and I’m glad to see it getting use in the late game too. I always start my playthroughs out with fishing, and if anyone wants to know here are some of my findings: 1. The fiberglass rod will do you well for a really long time. I know the iridium rod is great for the bobbers, but 7500 gold at the beginning of the game is a hefty price to pay, especially when the smoker recipe is 10000 gold and getting that first will drastically increase your money made from fishing. 2. In fact, rushing the smoker is going to be well worth your while. After reaching level 10, only sell the fish you need to reach 10,000 gold for the smoker recipe and then go to level 100 in the mines until you can catch the cave jelly and make a smoker for the rest of your fish. You will start to catch more fish than you can process in a single day pretty quickly, but you will still be making more money than just fishing. I like this because it lets me take breaks to work on my farm while smoking the excess so I am still making money every day.
