Baits & Recovery aka Do blood leeches give a bonus chance to catching Sharks?

My observations indicate that Bait Squid is the best bait to use in any water type besides lava.

The reason for this is that bait squid don't return baits and so for a higher level fisher who never looses bait, and never accumulates bait, a much higher percentage of their catches yield trophy fish.

Considering how rare sharks have been historically, not enough data could be collected to know if there was an actual increased chance to catch a shark with a blood leech over a bait squid or herring or even a minnow - and due to unique way that bait squids interact with the fishing loot table(s) it is hard to make an argument that even if the blood leeches grant a 0.5% better chance of getting a shark in loot table, that the elimination of bait catches doesn't amount to a more significant bonus.

Now that young version of fish are flooding the market, I am hoping that bait will get a pass (if it hasn't already) to look at what baits are beneficial for what types of water.

Also, for the health of the fishing economy, I think since the rare trophy fish are so much more available, once baits become a greater factor in catching, perhaps circumstances can exist to where a trophy version of a rare fish always consumes the bait used and possibly significantly increasing the bait recovery level needed to achieve 0% bait loss - or some other means of ensuring high level fishers need bait on occasion too.

 

What do you mean by "don't return baits" ? @Sorgin Txakal

 

When you fish using a tiny squid you won't catch any bait, the downside being no bait but that's fine if you're at 100% bait recovery, the upside is you're not wasting a cast and thereby improving your odds of catching a trophy fish.

 

I do not have enough data to know for sure, and things may be changing from release to release. The rare fish are quite rare, though I think I had much better chance getting sharks with blood leech. I get common fish slightly less often with better baits. Anyway if your bait recovery is lower than 99.8% I do not think the rare baits are worth the frustration, they are better but not by much and it takes hundreds if not thousands of tries to catch the rare fish.

I think that the uncommon baits should be consumed by uncommon and rare fish and rare baits should be consumed by rare fish. Or when you catch higher tier bait (e.g. when you catch blood leech you lose drudge leech).

Back to your original question, I do not mind catching some bait, it is not like every other catch is a bait... and as for the baits, I do not have the exact numbers but when I tried several releases ago, when we can carry 2 Pax rings and I did not lose my baits, my chances to catch shark were about 1:750 with blood leech and 1:1500 with squid, and maybe 1:5000 with minnows, but I have not got many, so that may have been just my RNG (bad) luck.