How to Fish Mini-Bosses — Optional, But Not Pointless
One unlocks the grill. One is mandatory bait. Two are pure profit. None are on the story path.
Five creatures in How to Fish sit beside the story route rather than on it. They do not gate an island, so the game never forces you into them, and a speedrunner can skip most of them entirely. Treating them as pure filler is a mistake though: one of them switches on cooking for the rest of the run, one is a hard requirement for the fourth story boss, and two are among the best money in the game.
All five are summoned with shop lures rather than quest items, which is exactly why they are easy to confuse with the story bosses. If you cast a shop Boss Lure expecting a story fight, you will get one of these instead. The lure tiers themselves are compared in Lures & Bait.
Quick reference
| Creature | Island | Lure | Why bother |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Old Pike | Forest | Beginner Boss Lure | Cheap practice, easy money |
| Blue Shark | Desert | Standard Boss Lure | Unlocks the grill |
| Tuna | Rocks | Professional Boss Lure | Mandatory bait for the Albatross |
| Goblin Shark | Volcano | Scientific Boss Lure | Highest-value fish in the game |
| Bowhead Whale | Volcano | Fish Bucket | Setup for the final boss |
The Old Pike
The lightest boss fight in the set. Summon it on the Forest island with the Beginner Boss Lure. It flops in close and swings its tail, and the hits sting without being lethal if you already own a shotgun. There is no clever pattern to learn — keep firing through the flop.
Its real value is as a rehearsal. If the Giant Piranha is beating you, the Old Pike lets you practise reading a boss and managing the escape timer without spending a quest item on the attempt.
Blue Shark — the one you should not skip
The Standard Boss Lure brings the Blue Shark up on the Desert island, and this is the most valuable optional kill in the game because it unlocks cooking. After it dies, talk to the NPC beside the grill and you receive the lighter. From that point on, holding food over heat multiplies its value up to 1.5x and its healing along with it, which changes the economics of every remaining fight. Details are in Cooking & Grill.
The shark drives in with a spinning charge and a shark that reaches you almost always connects. Stay wide, keep the shotgun on it, and do not let it close the gap. A bullet upgrade before you summon it makes the health bar drop noticeably faster — see Weapons & Rods. Do this before the Pufferfish so the rest of the run benefits.
Tuna — mandatory, not optional
The Tuna is listed as a mini-boss but it is a hard requirement. The Albatross will not spawn without a dead Tuna lying on the ground as bait, so this fight is part of the story chain in practice.
Summon it on the Rocks island with the Professional Boss Lure, which costs around $1,200. It charges in a straight line, and because the island is small there is barely room to kite, so answer the charge with a shotgun at close range and lean on bullet upgrades rather than footwork. Keep the body when it dies — do not cook it and do not sell it.
Goblin Shark — the payday
The Scientific Boss Lure summons the Goblin Shark on the Volcano island. It is the single most valuable fish in the game at roughly $6,200 raw and about $9,300 lava-cooked, which makes it the fastest way to fund a fully kitted assault rifle. Stack killscore multipliers on the kill and the number climbs further, as explained in Killscore and priced in Fish Prices.
It also counts toward the Collector encyclopedia entry tracked in Rare Variants.
Bowhead Whale
The regular Bowhead Whale is summoned with the Fish Bucket the volcano scientist gives you, and it is much weaker than its mutated form. It charges and then launches into the sky before slamming down, so move the moment it goes up.
Do not sell the carcass. Throwing that body into the volcano crater is what spawns the final boss, covered step by step in Lava Whale Final Boss. Everything else about the route is in the Walkthrough, and the full fight list is on the All Bosses hub.