How to Fish Boss Order: All Bosses, Islands and Weapons

Updated 2026-09-02 · Steam How to Fish

The six story bosses in How to Fish come in a fixed order, one per island plus the finale: Spider Crab (island 1), Giant Piranha (island 2), Pufferfish (island 3), Albatross (island 4), Bowhead Whale (island 5) and then the Mutated Bowhead Whale. Every one of these How to Fish bosses is fished up with a bait you earn from that island's quest, never bought from a shop. The small Fandom wiki's "Walkthrough and Boss Order" page describes the main route as five island stages and ten bosses, starting with the Spider Crab and ending with the Mutated Bowhead Whale, which lines up with the six story bosses plus the lure-summoned mini-bosses below.

Boss fights are on a clock. Player guides note a timer sitting next to the boss health bar, and if it runs out the boss leaves, so damage per second matters as much as survival.

Boss order at a glance

Islands are numbered the way the player walkthroughs number them. Bait names come from the community "ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS" list of 49 creatures; weapon picks are player-tested recommendations from the RubenS boss and weapon guide and the two big achievement guides.

#	Boss	Island	Bait or trigger	Weapon players recommend	Key trick
1	Spider Crab	1, Lighthouse	Empty beer can, from giving the keeper a beer	Knife ($45); guides split on brass knuckles	It stunlocks after its charge. Hit it then. No later boss stuns
2	Giant Piranha	2, Piranha or Leech Island	Modified Leech, from the 3 leeches quest	Shotgun ($150) or pistol	It vomits swarms of small piranhas. Kill the boss, not the swarm
3	Pufferfish	3	Carrot, from the tourist quest	SMG ($650) or shotgun	At 50% health it swaps to a poison-cloud phase. Kite around trees
4	Albatross	4	Drop a dead Tuna on the ground	Sniper rifle or maxed SMG	Fight from inside a building. Peek out between its dive and ranged attack
5	Bowhead Whale	5, Volcano	Fish Bucket, from the scientist quest	Assault rifle, fully upgraded	Circle-strafe the charge, then read who it is about to stomp
6	Mutated Bowhead Whale	5, Volcano	Throw the Bowhead Whale into the volcano	Assault rifle, all attachments	Same pattern plus lava pools and meteorites. Phase 2 is the hardest fight in the game

Each fight gets its own page: Spider Crab, Giant Piranha, Pufferfish, Albatross and both whales on Bowhead Whale.

Mini-bosses and boss lures

Island boss baits cannot be bought. Mini-boss lures can, and they are the ones sold in shops. Players report a durability roll on shop lures, so a summon sometimes leaves the lure in your bag and sometimes destroys it, while the quest baits for island bosses are spent on every single use.

Mini-boss	Lure	Price players report	Why you would bother
Sunfish	Beginner Boss Lure	$40	Cheapest summon in the game, used for two eating achievements
The Old Pike	Beginner Boss Lure	$40	Same lure pool as the Sunfish
Blue Shark	Standard Boss Lure	$280	Bring it to the grill master on island 3 to unlock cooking
Tuna	Professional Boss Lure	$1,200	The Tuna corpse is the Albatross bait
Goblin Shark	Scientific Boss Lure	$5,800	Optional. No quest points at it, but the encyclopedia counts it

Mini-boss trophies and drip creatures both go into the Reel of Fortune slot machines for weapon and rod skins, one machine per island. That means a cheap Beginner Boss Lure kill is a repeatable skin roll. More on that on the skins page.

That is eleven creatures flagged as bosses in the community bait list. Which ten the Fandom page counts is not confirmed yet, though the Goblin Shark is the obvious odd one out because nothing in the story sends you after it.

The instant weapon switch

The single most useful boss habit, from the RubenS guide and player-tested: when a boss bites, do not drop the catch manually. Dropping it by hand puts you back on your fists. Press the hotbar key for your weapon instead. That drops the fish and draws the gun in one action, and you start the fight armed.

Two more habits worth building:

Cook fish before every fight and carry them. The grill peaks at a 1.5x value multiplier and lava on island 5 hits exactly 1.5x with no timing risk. Cooked fish is also your heal.
Every enemy shows a red dot through walls, so you can track a boss from cover and step out on your own terms.

Boss-by-boss tactics

Spider Crab

Buy a beer at the lighthouse shop and hand it to the old man sitting on the bench. What he passes back is the empty container, and that empty is the rod bait that calls the crab. The crab charges, then stuns for a few seconds. Get behind it and hit it during the stun. It drops a shell for the keeper, who trades it for the boat keys. Guides stress that no later boss hands you a free stun like this one, so treat it as a one-off rather than a habit.

Weapon advice for this fight is genuinely split among player guides. RubenS says buy the $45 knife straight away and skip the brass knuckles entirely; "All 28 Achievements and Post-Game Route" instead sharpens the brass knuckles to maximum before summoning; "The Ultimate Guide to Unlocking All Achievements" only asks for gear suited to the island and names that as a knife and brass knuckles, without picking between them; and one 1.0.5 solo clam-farming route reports that an unupgraded knife clears the crab without trouble. None of that is official.

Giant Piranha

Find 3 leeches in the tall grass on island 2 and give them to the lady on the rock for the bait. The boss keeps spitting smaller piranhas. Guides split on how to handle them: RubenS suggests dynamite into the water cluster, while the 28-achievement guide argues against explosives because of self-damage and says to use melee on the small ones. Both agree the boss is the priority. The two guides also disagree about what it drops and what you do with it: "All 28 Achievements and Post-Game Route" says it drops a tail and that carrying the tail back to the lady is the dinner she asked for, while "The Ultimate Guide to Unlocking All Achievements" says it drops a skeleton and meat, and that turning the skeleton in earns a tracker-loaded flash drive that lights the route to the next island up on your radar. Both accounts are player-reported, no patch note settles it, and which one is current is not confirmed yet. Either way the turn-in goes back to the same lady on the rock. See leeches for the bait.

Pufferfish

Catch an endangered species with the standard lure and trade it to the tourist for a carrot. The two achievement guides name different species: "All 28 Achievements and Post-Game Route" lists needlefish, bowl fish and sea horse, while "The Ultimate Guide to Unlocking All Achievements" lists pigeonfish, sea horse and fish-in-aquarium, and the community 49-creature bait list has no pigeonfish in it at all, so the full endangered pool is not confirmed yet. Phase one it rolls at you, so strafe without sprinting and circle it. At exactly 50% health it enters phase two, grows, loses interest in chasing and trails a purple poison cloud that hurts badly. Stay wide. Patch 1.0.4 (21 August 2026) nerfed the Pufferfish, so guides written before that date describe a harder fight.

Albatross

Buy the Professional Boss Lure, fish up the Tuna mini-boss, kill it, then drop the corpse on the ground to summon the bird. The bird works with a dive that comes straight down on you and a projectile you can hear it charge before it fires, and a roof over your head beats either one. The casino gives the best visibility; speedrunners use the weapon or engine shack. Keep its meat for island 5 and lava-cook it.

Bowhead Whale and Mutated Bowhead Whale

Give the scientist in the hazmat suit five fish for the whale bait; players say a stick of dynamite thrown into the shallows fills that order quicker than casting for them. One 1.0.10 speedrun guide instead reports handing over five beers, so the exact quest item may have changed and is not confirmed. The whale charges and launches into the sky to stomp a player. Dodge the charge in a circle, and when it goes airborne, whoever it targets runs.

Throwing the whale body into the volcano spawns the Mutated Bowhead Whale, the final boss. Same moves plus lava pools and lava meteorites across the arena, and a phase 2 that stomps almost constantly. Turn up with the assault rifle fully upgraded, every one of its four slots filled, and an inventory stuffed with lava-cooked fish. It drops a tail; give it to the scientist for the RHIB keys and the ending. The whale was also nerfed in patch 1.0.4.

Money and gear checkpoints

Prices below are player-reported from multiplayer runs and may differ solo.

Island	Buy before the boss	Price players report
1	Knife (skip the brass knuckles per RubenS)	$45
2	Shotgun, dynamite, boat engine	$150, $25, $230
3	SMG, plus bullet upgrades	$650
4	Boss lure, SMG compensator, Dual Motors engine	$1,200, $600, $860
5	Assault rifle with all attachments and max ammo	around $85,000

Full prices and the attachment slots are on weapons; the lure economy is on bait.

Difficulty, patches and boss-related mods

Patch 1.0.9 (24 August 2026) added difficulty options: easy gives all creatures 25% less health and 50% less damage, hard gives 25% more health and 25% more damage, and the default is unchanged from launch. Patch 1.0.4 nerfed both the Pufferfish and the Whale, added 8-player lobbies, made the path up to the final island easier to see, fixed a permanent boss timer stuck on screen, and fixed the bare-hands final-boss achievement so it unlocks for everyone in the lobby.

Two client-side Thunderstore mods target boss fights directly: BossHP v0.1.4 shows exact synchronized boss HP beside the native bar, and BossTimer v0.1.6 shows the time left before the active boss leaves. Both ship inside the Enhanced_HowToFish modpack. Aimbot and cheat-menu mods that trivialise bosses also exist there; this site does not cover them. Install steps are on mods, and the boss achievements are broken down on achievements.

Sources and last check

Checked 2 September 2026. Boss order and the "five island stages, ten bosses" framing come from the small How to Fish Fandom wiki's Walkthrough and Boss Order page. Nerfs to the Pufferfish and Whale, the fixed boss timer, the bare-hands achievement fix and the difficulty settings come from the official Dazed Games patch notes for 1.0.4 (21 August 2026) and 1.0.9 (24 August 2026) on Steam.

Everything else here is player-reported, not official: the bait list from the community "ALL THE TYPES OF BAITS" guide covering 49 creatures, the tactics and prices from "All 28 Achievements and Post-Game Route" and "The Ultimate Guide to Unlocking All Achievements", and the instant weapon switch and weapon priority from the RubenS boss and weapon strategy guide of 30 August 2026. The solo knife route comes from the "Bean 1.0.5 Guide (Solo)" and the five-beer whale hand-in from "Under One Hour Tips/Guide 1.0.10", both player speedrun guides. Prices come from multiplayer runs and players note that weapon upgrades appear cheaper solo. Where guides disagree, both readings are named above. Mod names, versions and download counts are from Thunderstore.