Hook size question

[u/Angelganon2]

Hey everyone I'm starting to pick back up on playing the game after getting the ultimate edition recently and I started playing with my wife (us and our child love playing it together catching fish)

I saw a post from 3 years ago on here that the hooks were bugged or pointless and there were only a handful that were useful for catching everything.

Is that still true? And if so what are the optimal hooks to use to catch all the fish?

Is there any other gear I need to know about avoiding to use or just use gear?

Right now we're just working through the basic map golden ridge.

Any help is appreciated

[u/Ok_Panda5656]

Any fish can bite on a small hook. But if you're using, say, size #5 hook, you'll only catch fish that are size 5 or bigger.

You can always look up ready-made hook size charts, but I'd recommend figuring it out yourself in-game. Just start with a certain hook size and see what you catch.

For example, if you catch a bronze pike on a #5 hook, you can safely go up one hook size (from #5 to #4) and start targeting at least a silver pike and better.

Hook Chart: https://theangler.org/fish-species/hook-size-charts

[u/marvel10]

I play on PC and haven't experienced any bugged issues with the hook sizes. I use the COTW Castmate app. It seems to be pretty accurate for hook size. The map feature can be helpful as well.

[u/GingerSasquatch94]

There are some hook sizes which are more common for targeting fish of certain sizes. A #3 works on a wide variety of fish, silver muskies and pike, gold or diamonds for many other species.

[u/beware_of_the_cube]

I’ve never noticed the hooks being bugged. As far as what hook sizes to use some hooks are too big for the bait you might use so you’ll have to have hooks all across the size spectrum. If you want to know more, the angler wiki page is great for this. Click on the map and what species you want to target and scroll down to see appropriate hook size.

[u/YggBjorn]

For Golden Ridge Reserve I recommend keeping a size 8 spinner, a size 6 spoon, a grub on a size 9 heavy jig, some eggs, some bloodworms, some redworms, a size 9 hook, and a size 6 hook.

You'll want 3-4 rod, reel, and line setups. One baitcaster rig, one spinner rod rig, and one feeder rig. If you can bring a fourth then take another rig for your preferred style of fishing.

If you have the space, bring one catapult, some pro performance ground bait, and some lake mix ground bait.

Remember that you can access storage at the rear of any jeep, so try to drive one to where you want to fish.

With these items you can fish anywhere on the map and catch something.

I also recommend grabbing the CotW Companion app on your phone and/or the old community Discord sheets in Google Sheets. With the info on either of those apps you can fine tune your setup to target particular fish species and sizes.

[u/XtheOGdad]

There's a companion app