Deep Catch

Fishing, from a worm on a hook to an industrial trawler.

Deep Catch replaces vanilla's "right click and wait" with a fishing game of its own: you rig your tackle, charge the cast, watch a fish swim up and study the bait, set the hook when it bites, and then play it on a live tension meter until it comes out of the water. From there it grows into nets, boats, sonar and an entire fishing industry.

Built for NeoForge 1.21.1. English and Spanish included.

Fishing you actually play

• Charge your cast. Hold to load the rod, release to send the rig out; the longer the load, the further it goes.
• Fish come to the bait. Real fish entities swim up, circle the bait, nibble at it and finally take it. You see the take before the HUD tells you.
• Set the hook, then fight. Hold to reel, let go to give line.
• Tension, drag and stamina. Pull harder than your line can take and an overload meter fills, with warnings, until the line parts. The reel's drag slips line before that happens. Let the line go slack for too long and the hook comes loose.
• Every fish is unique: species, weight, length, quality grade and rare variants (albino, golden, melanistic...). Your journal keeps the records.

Tackle that matters

Nine slots to build a rig: reel, line, hook, bait, sinker, float, lure, swivel and charm.

• 8 rods, from a stick and string to an industrial rod.
• 6 reels (retrieve speed, drag, line capacity), 6 lines (breaking strain and visibility — fluoro is nearly invisible to wary fish), 7 hook sizes, sinkers, floats and lures.
• Baits gathered from the world: worms from soil, crickets from grass, larvae from leaves, shrimp from seagrass, plus cut bait, chum and special baits for the legends.
• Open the rig with sneak + right click, or at a tackle box.

45 species, each with its own water

Every species is a datapack entry with its own biome, water type, depth band, temperature range, time of day, weather, season, altitude and distance to shore, plus bait and hook preferences, fighting behaviour and market value. Carp in warm rivers, cod on cold banks, cavefish in the dark, coelacanths in the deep — and the rare ones only show up when everything lines up.

Adding a species is adding a JSON file. The registry is synced to clients, so datapacks and other mods can extend the fish list without touching code.

Nets and fish schools

• Fixed nets in three sizes: use one while looking at the water and it is set right there. It fishes on its own, holds what it catches, takes bait and reinforced mesh, and wears out with big fish and storms.
• Fish schools live in the world as lightweight data: they migrate, thin out where you fish them hard, and recover over time. Hundreds of fish exist without hundreds of entities, and a few swim visibly when you are close enough to see them.

Boats you build and crew

Six classes, from a rowing boat to a factory ship, all with their own physics, seats, hold, fuel and hull condition:

• Engines (outboard, inboard, diesel, turbo diesel, marine turbine) that burn fuel you refine into canisters at a fuel station.
• Modules: sonar, GPS, fish finder, net winch, extra hold, cold storage, processing line, automatic rigs, floodlights, autopilot and spare tanks.
• Trawl, industrial and giant nets shot and hauled with the winch; the bag fills with whatever the sweep crosses, and the schools are where the real hauls are.
• At the helm, your own ship is drawn see-through, so the wheelhouse never blocks your view.

Electronics

Depth sounder, water thermometer, pocket fish finder, portable sonar with a sweeping display, long-range rare species locator, and a hand-held GPS that stores your fishing marks and points the way back to them. Aim at the water — from a boat, a jetty or the shore.

From catch to cash

Fishing table, drying rack, advanced smoker, canning, fish oil; fish storage and cold storage that control freshness; a fish market whose prices follow species, weight, quality and freshness; and a contract board that pays for real jobs.

Progression

Catches give angler experience. Your level unlocks recipes at the fishing workbench, the electronics bench and the shipyard, so the road runs from a bone hook and a worm to sonar, industrial nets and a factory ship. Your journal tracks species, records and where to look next.

An in-game guide, in 3D

Craft the Angler's Field Guide (a book and some string) and every system is explained on a page with a live 3D scene you can drag to turn, zoom and inspect: the tackle, a net set in a pool, the workstations, and the actual boat models rolling on the swell.

Built to be modded and to run well

• Data-driven species, biome tags for compatibility with modded biomes, item components instead of NBT, payload-based networking, and all authority on the server.
• Schools simulated cheaply, fish entities capped and never saved to disk, environmental scans cached per cast, nets on timers instead of per-tick work.
• Around 130 recipes, 190+ items and 16 blocks, with a server config for nearly everything (difficulty, fish limits, net rates, fuel use, economy, seasons, freshness) and a client config for the HUD and rendering.
• Full en_us and es_es translations from day one.