New World: How To Fish & Not Break Fishing Line in Aeternum

Fishing is one of the many trade skills in New World: Aeternum, but learning how to fish and not break your fishing pole’s line can be tough.

While fishing itself is fairly simple in this game, it can be frustrating to keep failing to catch fish due to your line breaking. Properly managing tension can be much trickier than it seems! Of course, you also need to learn how to start fishing to begin with.

In this all-encompassing guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know to start fishing as well as how to keep the line tension low so that it doesn’t snap.

How To Fish & Not Break Fishing Line

To start fishing in New World: Aeternum, you’ll first need to obtain a Fishing Pole. You can buy one through the Trading Post, craft it at the Workshop or Camp, or obtain it through completing quests. We personally recommend obtaining it through Perronelle le Noir’s Fishing questline, which you can start in the location shown above.

Perronelle le Noir’s quests will introduce you to all of the basics required for fishing. What’s more, she’ll reward you with a Beginner’s Fishing Pole once you complete her first two quests. These quests work as tutorials for the Fishing system, so make sure to pay attention to the game while completing them!

Once you get and equip a Fishing Pole, you need to head to a fitting fishing spot. As you’re told during the quest, you can pretty much fish anywhere with water. That said, you should also keep in mind that there are Hotspots marked on your map, as shown above. Those Hotspots have a larger concentration of fish, particularly rarer ones.

Make sure to unlock mounts so you can get to different fishing spots faster!

To start fishing, you must enter Fishing Mode. You can select it from the Activity Wheel by holding Up on the DPad on consoles or by pressing F3 on PC. Stand in front of where you wish to fish and hold RT/R2 or Left Mouse to cast. The longer you hold, the further you’ll cast. The further you cast, the easier it will be to reel in fish. You can also equip Bait by pressing Y/Triangle or the E key, but it’s not mandatory.

Now that you’ve cast, you just have to wait for a bite. Quickly press RT/R2 or Left Mouse to hook the fish once you get a bite to start reeling it in!

How to Reel a Fish Without Breaking the Fishing Line

Alright, so you’ve hooked a fish! You must now start reeling it in by holding RT/R2 or Left Mouse, depending on your control scheme. While you reel, pay attention to the circular interface shown above.

The white edge around the circle tells you the distance left. It fills in a clockwise direction as you reel the fish in, so you’ll successfully catch the fish once the circle’s full. Conversely, the circle will start emptying when you stop reeling the fish in. Once it’s emptied, the fish will escape and you’ll have failed to catch it. There’s always next time, though!

More importantly, pay attention to the bar in the middle of the circle, which tells you the current tension on your fishing line. It starts green and small, but it becomes larger and changes color the longer you keep reeling in. It becomes orange once tension is over 50%, and red once your line is almost about to snap. To ease the tension, stop reeling the fish in.

The best way to keep your line from snapping is to simply stop reeling sporadically. For example, try only holding the button for a second or so instead of holding it all the time. It’s recommended to stop reeling as soon as it turns to orange, at the very least.

However, the tricky part is that different types of fish will apply different amounts of tension. Additionally, as we mentioned before, the reeling minigame becomes easier with higher cast distances. You can cast further away with better Fishing Poles and by increasing your Fishing Skill Level.

In summary, try to maximize your cast distance every time and reel intermittently. It’ll take practice to master, but now you know how to fish and not break your fishing line in New World: Aeternum!