Fishing Bait Test Results - Minnow / Hopper / Pale Leech / Drudge Leech

What does fishing bait do?
That question has been asked ever since the different bait types were introduced. I'm sharing these results to help advance the discussion. Let me know if you have any questions!

I hand entered hundreds of fish to run these stats - please also do let me know if you notice any errors or discrepancies, I'll do my best to get them corrected.

Commentary:
- These are based on the data below, and my observations from fishing in the Noma fishing contest, the minnow testing afterwards, and fishing experience up til now. Feel free to draw your own conclusions!

1) "Special baits" do not change the fishing % chance
As I noted in my Noma Contest breakdown, my preference is to always maximize fishing % FIRST (through skills, buffs, equipment, and moving fishing spots), and then consider using special baits SECOND.

2) "Special Baits" do change the "distribution" of what you catch - more and bigger rares and trophy fish
- This means catching more trophy fish (including rares), and less common fish, and armor.
- The trophy fish that you catch will tend to be larger with special baits.
- There are additional adjustments depending on bait type. For example - 4 Blood Leeches were caught with Drudge Leeches over 1 hour, while 1 Blood Leech was caught with Pale Leeches over 4 hours, and no Blood Leeches were caught with Minnows over 4 hours.
(I would love to get enough Blood Leeches to test how well they catch Sharks).
- The % shift is small, but matters over large samples sizes - such as with hundreds or thousands of items caught over the course of a 24-hour fishing contest. You can see the effect even in the 4-hour blocks of data here.
- You ALWAY have a chance to catch big and rare fish - even with only Red Worms and Minnows. Special baits just shift the distribution of what you catch.

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Testing Methodology:

Recently, I participated in the Novia Market 1st Annual Fishing Contest (53 participants, 2200+ total trophy fish caught over 24 hours).

I used all "special" baits throughout the contest:
Hopper - 167 Used (bonus to catching fish in fresh water) - over ~7-9 hours of Fresh Water fishing
Pale Leech - 158 Used (bonus to catching fish in fresh water, and a bonus to catching blood leeches) - over ~8-9 hours of Fetid Water fishing
Drudge Leech - 27 Used (bonus to catching in any water type, also adds large bonus to catching blood leeches) - over 1 hour of Fetid Water fishing

I did very well in the contest - catching the most trophy fish, and the biggest trophy fish in all awarded categories (overall, fresh, fetid, longest combined length in fresh and fetid).

I realized that this is a perfect opportunity to do a comparative test with Minnows.

So a few days after the contest - I did the following All Minnow Test:
- 4 hours of Fresh water fishing using Minnows
- 4 hours of Fetid water fishing using Minnows
In the same town of Novia Market, using the same locations, same process, same skills, same equipment as I did during the Noma contest - and only change the bait. I tried to control the variables as best as I could.

The stats and detailed breakdown for my catches are here (linking to posts in the contest thread):
- Novia Market Contest
- All Minnow Test

This includes specifics on my skills, equipment, process that I used to achieve these results.
Feel free to dig into the data there and ask me any questions.

For easier comparison - I pulled out the data for contiguous 4-hour blocks of data for the Noma contest, to match them against the 4 hour blocks for the All Minnow test, as follows:


During the Noma contest, I also fished for 1 hour using only Drudge Leeches. Those results are included as well for comparison purposes.

Results

Distribution of Fish Caught vs. Bait Type (Trophy Fish only)

- notice that the % of Rare / Uncommon trophy fish increases when special baits are used

Distribution of Fish Caught vs. Bait Type (excluding Armor and Bait)


Distribution of Items Caught vs. Bait Type (everything)


Rares and Large Fish Caught

- no "Large" fish were caught with Minnows in this test
- more and larger trophy fish were caught with "special bait"

Length Distribution

- note the small shifts towards the higher end of the length distribution

 

AWSOME and TY
But you have to also add in Time of day, yes it also does change something.

Also all you changes appear to be less than 5% and most especially for Rares is <1% yes this is a number but negligible.

And TY for running numbers, however is this is true

there is DEFFINITLY A PROBLEM as they are essentially worthless.

There needs to be direct developer feedback on this issue.

TY again for showing your Number's I know that is a lot of effort TY again.

 

Great work!

 

@Weins201
I'd love to see any data you have on the effect of time of day, weather, moon phase, etc. on fishing! I have started to keep track of some of that for the rare fish I catch, but I'd need a lot more data before trying to catch any patterns. What differences are you seeing due to time of day?

I added an additional breakdown - for "Distribution of Fish Caught vs. Bait Type (Trophy Fish only)" - to show Rares vs. Uncommons caught for different types of bait.

When you're dealing with such small numbers - such as going from 1% to 2% Rares being caught - that means you're almost doubling the numbers of rare fish you catch!

From previous spot tests (particularly on QA), I had an inkling that special baits do make a difference - so I set out specifically to use only special baits in the Novia Market fishing contest.

During the contest, I caught 16 rare fish in a single day (3 of them personal best largest for me), including 3 Fetid rare fish in an hour.

Almost all other times, I usually fish with minnows, and I've never had these kinds of results - which is one reason I wanted do the All Minnow test to compare and share the results.

This is what I like about this system:
- the effect of "special baits" are small or situational on a few casts - but CAN make a big difference over a large enough sample size
- this means that fishers using only Red Worms or Minnows ALWAYS have a chance to catch an amazing rare fish
- fishers wanting to "push the edge" can use the special baits - but it's not a guarantee of success

And yes - this was a lot of work to put together. I wanted to share so that there's at least one set of data out there.

 

I deef see nights as slow, sunrise / sunsets seem to be better. I am going of what they said mostly and general catchs.

I stopped trying to get number when they took out the "Catch Nothing" since % of a catch really is pretty stable just as you have found out.

yeah but for statistical purposes they are insignificant, and doing math with them falls into actually zero values. And since I have been asking for raw numbers so it can be tested, null values are not worth it.

Yes I have been fishing with minnows since almost day 1 of fishing.
The real problem I see with those rare baits, not just the #s being soo small impossible to test and there is nothing to actually check against. Also i see the problem that when using them one should NEVER catch Junk and basically not ever "Caught Nothing" when using a bait that give a Large or Very Large bonus.

But again since we have absolutely zero numbers to check against, all we have are players like you who throw a number out ( I am not bothering until they give us something) and take those reults as what, good?

sorry but a 1% chance at pulling in a rare fish does not quantify using a rare bait. especially when I can get the same 1% using a minnow.

Again TY for showing numbers, much appreciated but until I have something to balance them off of they are just data.

I have see you fishing since the start and you where the one I saw every day out for Pacus, so I know you are doing the work.

Keep on working on it some day we can compare our Pacu Wall when I get mine back up

 

Which contest was that @Kron Caledon ?

 

Heres the link.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...t-annual-fishing-contest.153635/#post-1228393

 

I tested about 100 casts with blood liches ..got no sharks .

 

It was the Novia Market 1st Annual Fishing Contest! Happened this past Saturday April 13, 2019. Robyn Hood did a great job organizing it, with lots of help and support from Rook Strife and others.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...via-market-1st-annual-fishing-contest.153635/

My breakdown of my catches of the contest and exactly what I did were further down in that thread here.

 

Yeah - we need to catch one or more sharks in a single session to even have numbers to look at.

From my data - looks like I used about 20-30 special baits per hour during the contest.

Ideally - I would like to do a 4-hour test with 150 Blood Leeches (which should last the 4 hours) - and see how many sharks I catch (if any). One day.