Fish escaped with your bait

[DeltaDude2016]

How do I increase my chances of actually catching fish? ive been fishing for almost 30 minutes and i have only 5 fish. i started with 35 entrails as bait but lost most of it, what gives?

[Miss_Min]

Change something about your setup. At any given place and time, each setup gives you three different fish*. Sometimes, one of those fish will always steal your bait. So either try the same hook and line somewhere else, or use a different hook or line. Or a different bait.

[* Or at least that's how it has worked in some previous worlds, there is of course always the possibility that something has changed. And this does not include the possibility of catching 'trash' which happens to be a fish, because that can be very confusing for stats. The game will also automatically pull leeches off you to use as bait, which can also be confusing.]

[Audiosmurf]

Just go to a different spot. Fishing "density" nodes are really stupidly swingy, so "a different spot" can be like 10 feet away.

Edit: I also have this theory that fishing while standing in the water at some point started adding a penalty to catch rate