At a glance: every Unturned cast is a fixed dice roll — Raw Goldfish 38.1%, Raw Minnow 28.57%, Raw Trout 19.05%, Raw Salmon 7.62%, Raw Bass 1.90%, and 4.77% of casts are non-fish junk. Roughly two thirds of everything you reel in is a Goldfish or a Minnow.
Most “how to fish” answers stop at “equip a rod and click water”. The useful question is what you actually get, because the loot table decides whether fishing is a food strategy, a building trickle, or a waste of time. Here is the whole thing with real numbers.
The full catch table
The Official Unturned Wiki publishes the exact probability for every possible catch on the Fishing Rod. Nothing here is estimated — these are the drop weights.
| Catch | Chance |
|---|---|
| Raw Goldfish | 38.10% |
| Raw Minnow | 28.57% |
| Raw Trout | 19.05% |
| Raw Salmon | 7.62% |
| Raw Bass | 1.90% |
| Cloth | 0.95% |
| Nails | 0.95% |
| Tape | 0.95% |
| Metal Can | 0.48% |
| Birch Stick | 0.48% |
| Maple Stick | 0.48% |
| Pine Stick | 0.48% |
Add the column up and it lands on 100.01% (rounding), which is the tell that this is a complete table rather than a sample.
Read the table before you trust fishing as a food plan
Group the catches and a very different picture appears than the “free fish” fantasy:
| Bucket | Catches | Combined chance |
|---|---|---|
| Common fish (Goldfish + Minnow) | 2 | 66.67% |
| Usable food fish (Trout + Salmon + Bass) | 3 | 28.57% |
| Non-fish junk (Cloth/Nails/Tape/Can/Sticks) | 7 | 4.77% |
So two of every three casts are the two low-value fish. If you are fishing to feed a base, you will spend most of your time cooking Goldfish and Minnows, not Trout and Salmon. The three “good” fish together are barely more than a quarter of your catches.
That is the first trap. Fishing is not a fast food engine; it is a steady, low-effort trickle that works best as a supplement to hunting and looting, covered in the survival guide.
The junk is not all junk
Look again at the 4.77% non-fish bucket. It is not filler — it is a second, quieter resource line:
- Cloth, Nails and Tape at 0.95% each. Cloth is the material for a Sandbag (5 Cloth), and Nails feed workbench and repair recipes. A long fishing session quietly stocks your building supply.
- Sticks at 0.48% each, one per wood type. This is the surprising one. Sticks normally drop from felled trees, but the fishing table hands them out too — and every wooden Barricade needs 2 Sticks on top of its planks. Fishing is therefore a passive stick source while you wait out a storm.
The practical reading: fishing pays you twice. Once in food, once in the low-grade crafting materials you would otherwise have to chop for. If you are already chopping trees with a Camp Axe or Pickaxe, fishing tops up the same stockpile without swinging a tool.
Getting and upgrading the rod
The Fishing Rod is an Uncommon tool with item ID 503 and a 3×1 inventory footprint. You can craft it, and the game’s Tutorial hands you one along with a patch of water specifically so you can learn the cast.
The upgrade path is the part most guides skip. The Upgraded Fishing Rod Blueprint is not a random drop — it is tied to a quest:
- Travel to the Russia map.
- Find Wallace, who is aboard the Liberator.
- Accept the quest “The Ultimate Fishing Rod” to receive the blueprint.
- Craft it with a Fishing Rod + Raw Explosives + Nails + 2 Wire, at Crafting II.
The upgraded craft outputs two rods per recipe, and it is aimed at “catching larger fish”. You can also break either rod down for 2 Metal Scrap if you need the metal more than the fishing. For the wider crafting picture, see the crafting guide.
Cooking what you catch
Fishing without cooking wastes most of the value. Every raw fish becomes food through a Heat source — a Campfire is the standard one — at Cooking I:
- Cooked Minnow restores 15 food. It is the baseline cheap meal.
- Three Cooked Minnow + two Bread make a Minnow Sandwich at Cooking II, which is the efficient way to turn a stack of common fish into something worth carrying.
- Trout, Salmon and Bass cook the same way and are worth more food per item, which is exactly why their low drop rates matter.
Cooking is a skill investment, so plan it with the skill guide before you commit points. A Campfire also doubles as warmth and light, which the beginner guide covers for your first night.
Is fishing worth it at all?
Yes, but for the right reason. Treat it as:
- A safe food trickle when you are holed up and cannot hunt — no ammo, no noise beyond the water.
- A passive material source for Cloth, Nails and Sticks that feed Barricades and Sandbags.
- A Goldfish farm, honestly — accept that two thirds of your catches are the cheap fish and cook them in bulk.
Do not treat it as a fast route to high-value food. Raw Bass at 1.90% is roughly one catch in fifty; if you are fishing for Bass specifically you will be there a long time. That expectation gap is why so many players call fishing “useless” — the table says it is slow, not useless.
A note on version drift
The catch percentages are the kind of table a patch can quietly rebalance. Every figure here — 38.1%, 28.57%, the 0.48% stick rows, and the Cooking I/II requirements — was read from the Official Unturned Wiki in October 2026. If a cast in-game feels far off these numbers after an update, recheck the Fishing Rod page before trusting this table.