Starcatcher completely reimagines fishing in Minecraft, replacing the simple wait-and-click mechanic with a visually striking skill-based minigame. The mod adds over 130 fish spanning every biome, dimension, and liquid in the game, each with its own catch conditions, rarity, and description. Whether you are fishing in a Cherry Grove lake at sunset or dipping a hook into Nether lava, every catch feels like a challenge worth attempting.
The mod is built around collection and progression. You track every fish you have caught in the 
Starcatcher's Guide, which records each entry's rarity, conditions, and your personal records. Hooks, bobbers, and baits let you customize your rod for different fishing scenarios, and rare catches reward you with trophies and lore-filled bottles.
Getting Started with Starcatcher
Getting into Starcatcher requires crafting a few core items before you can begin the minigame. The mod does not replace your vanilla fishing rod, so your existing gear stays useful.
The Starcatcher system runs entirely through its own custom rod, which you build from scratch using simple early-game materials.
Craft the Starcatcher's Twine
Combine String and a Stick to make the twine
The 
Starcatcher's Twine is a required component for your fishing rod. Craft it by placing a 
Stick in the center of a crafting grid and surrounding it with four 
String in a cross pattern. This gives you the line material used in building the actual rod.
Craft the Iron Hook
Combine Iron Ingots and Iron Nuggets to create the basic hook
The 
Iron Hook is the starting point of your hook progression. Craft it using Iron Ingots and Iron Nuggets arranged in a U-shape pattern. This basic hook is required to assemble your 
Starcatcher's Rod and can later be upgraded into more powerful variants at the crafting table.
Craft the Bobber
Use Planks, Sticks, and Wool to create the standard bobber
The 
Bobber is the other required attachment for your rod. Combine Planks, Sticks, and Wool in the crafting grid to produce it.
Both the Iron Hook and the Bobber must be in your inventory when you craft the rod. Without these attachments, you cannot cast the line.
Craft the Starcatcher's Rod
Combine Sticks, Twine, Hook, and Bobber to build your rod
The Starcatcher's Rod is assembled from three Sticks, the Starcatcher's Twine, an Iron Hook, and a Bobber, arranged in a diagonal pattern.
This is the only rod that works with the Starcatcher minigame. You can customize it later by swapping hooks and bobbers using crouch and right-click, and applying cosmetic rod skins through a smithing table.
Craft the Starcatcher's Guide
Combine your Rod with a Book to create the collection guide
The Starcatcher's Guide is your catalog and settings hub. Craft it by combining the Starcatcher's Rod with a 
Book in a shapeless recipe. You don't lose the Starcatcher's Rod when you generate a Guide with it.
Every fish you catch gets recorded here, showing you the conditions needed to catch it, your fastest catch time, the bait used, and your personal size and weight records. The Guide also contains a Settings page where you can adjust minigame speed, marker behavior, GUI scale, and weight units. It is highly recommended to craft this item to help keep organized and progress more consistently.
Cast your rod near any water source and watch the bobber. When an exclamation mark appears above it, right-click to trigger the minigame. Non-fish catches like junk items skip the minigame entirely and just land in your inventory.
General Gameplay
Starcatcher gives fishing a full progression arc: cast your rod, right-click when the bobber sinks, and complete the minigame to land the catch. Every fish you catch gets recorded in the Guide, and filling it out is the core goal. What you catch depends on the biome, time of day, weather, and season, so the same spot can yield completely different fish depending on conditions.
You'll start in simple Overworld biomes and work outward: the Nether, Deep Dark, and End introduce harder fish with stricter requirements, rarer bait, and more punishing minigames. Between sessions, sell fish for emeralds, craft cosmetics, build aquariums, and enter tournaments. There's always a reason to keep casting.
The Fishing Minigame
The Starcatcher minigame is a reflex-based challenge that replaces the vanilla fishing pull with something far more interactive. Players who picked up this mod specifically for the minigame call it one of the most visually impressive fishing systems ever added by a mod, and it genuinely requires skill and timing rather than just luck.
How the Minigame Works
When a fish bites and you right-click to start the minigame, a vertical game screen appears. The fish tries to escape downward, and your job is to press Space to push it upward toward the catch zone at the top.
Sweet spots appear on the bar as colored targets. Hitting them moves you closer to catching the fish. Missing a sweet spot reduces the fish's HP bar and applies a miss penalty, making the fight harder.
Each fish has its own HP pool and speed, which determine how aggressively it resists. Common fish move slowly and have small HP pools, while Legendary fish can have over 1,000 HP and fight with modifiers that punish missed inputs. The 
Stonefish, found deep in stone caves, holds the highest HP value in the mod at 3,000, requiring sustained accuracy over a very long fight.
Sweet Spots and Miss Penalties
Sweet spots are the colored circular targets that appear during the minigame. Green spots are the standard type and appear most frequently, while Aqua spots are a softer variant that some fish use instead.
Hitting a sweet spot rewards HP recovery, while missing one applies a miss penalty that makes the fight harder. Some fish also apply special effects on miss: 
Cerberay sets you on fire when you miss, and 
Aurora freezes the bar for a moment instead.
Treasures can appear during tougher catches as a red line alongside the standard green lines. Catching a treasure without losing the fish rewards you with special items such as hooks, bobbers, and smithing templates. Treasures are genuinely rare, so do not be discouraged if you catch dozens of fish before seeing one.
Minigame Settings
Open the Starcatcher's Guide and navigate to the Settings tab to access all minigame configuration options. The speed setting (default 9) controls how fast the sweet spots move. Lower it if the game feels too fast, or raise it for a harder challenge.
The hit delay setting adds a brief lag to each Space press, helping you time pulls more precisely if you tend to panic-press.
The 
Steady Bobber option locks the Bobber in place so it does not vanish after a set time, which helps beginners stay oriented. Weight units can be set to kilograms, pounds, or cheeseburgers.
Tackle Box
The 
Tackle Box is your primary storage block for all fishing equipment. It holds fish, hooks, bobbers, baits, and other rod attachments in a dedicated inventory, keeping your fishing gear organized separately from your base storage.
Craft it with Copper Ingots, Iron Ingots, and Chain. The Tackle Box comes in all 16 dye colors, making it easy to color-code your storage by equipment type or fishing location.
Starcatcher Hooks Guide
Hooks are the primary upgrade path for your Starcatcher's Rod. You start with an Iron Hook, which is required to craft the rod itself.
From there, you either craft stronger hooks using ore and your existing hook or find rarer hooks by fishing them up as drops. Equip any hook by crouching and right-clicking on the rod while holding the hook.
Iron Hook
Copper Hook
Heavy Hook
Shiny Hook
Craftable Hooks
The 
Copper Hook requires a 
Copper Block, Copper Ingots, and an Iron Hook. It increases handle speed in the minigame, making your pointer move faster when aiming at sweet spots.
This is part of the Copper Hook progression series, running through Exposed, Weathered, and Oxidized variants, with each tier further reducing handle speed. The 
Oxidised Copper Hook has the slowest handle speed in the series.
The 
Gold Hook is crafted from Gold Ingots, Gold Nuggets, and an Iron Hook. When equipped, it slightly increases the chance of catching a golden variant of any fish, which are rare mutations that appear in the Guide as separate entries with unique golden coloring.
The 
Shiny Hook requires Diamonds and Iron Nuggets alongside the base hook. When you hit three sweet spots in a row, a treasure chest sweet spot spawns, letting you grab loot alongside the catch.
The 
Stone Hook prevents the fish from swimming away for a short period after you score a hit on a sweet spot. The 
Heavy Hook makes all sweet spots move more slowly, giving you more time to aim.
The 
Frozen Hook occasionally spawns frozen sweet spots that stay stationary, making them considerably easier to hit. The 
Echoing Hook prevents the fish from swimming away once, bouncing it back on what would have been an escape.
Starcatcher Bait Guide
Baits unlock fish that would otherwise never appear on your line. Most fish have one or more bait requirements listed in the Starcatcher's Guide, and without the correct bait equipped, those entries simply will not bite.
All baits are crafted by combining 
Bone Meal with a biome-specific material, usually yielding 4 baits per craft. Equip bait the same way as hooks: crouch and right-click.
Overworld Baits
Cherry Bait is made from Bone Meal and Pink Petals, and is required for fish native to Cherry Grove biomes. 
Lush Bait combines Bone Meal and a Moss Block, targeting fish that live in Lush Caves underground.
Sculk Bait uses Bone Meal and Sculk, enabling you to hook the quietest fish in the Deep Dark. 
Dripstone Bait is crafted from Bone Meal and Dripstone, used for stubborn species in the Dripstone Caves.
4
4
4
4
Murkwater Bait is made from Bone Meal and Mangrove Leaves, and is the bait of choice for Swamp fishing. It unlocks several fish that require swamp biome conditions and will not appear without it. Cherry, Lush, Sculk, and Dripstone baits all yield 4 per craft, while Murkwater Bait also yields 4 per craft using its own recipe.
4Starcatcher Bobbers Guide
Bobbers are cosmetic and mechanical attachments that modify the minigame experience. The standard Bobber is required to cast your rod and is crafted from Planks, Sticks, and Wool.
Upgraded bobbers change which sweet spot types appear, how they behave, or how long they stay visible. Like hooks, you equip bobbers via crouch and right-click.
Craftable Bobbers
The 
Clear Bobber extends how long vanishing sweet spots remain visible, giving you more time to line up hits on moving targets. The Steady Bobber enlarges green sweet spots slightly, making the standard catch easier without changing the core challenge.
The 
Slimey Bobber adds three extra Aqua sweet spots to the minigame screen, increasing your scoring opportunities. The 
Aqua Bobber adds a single extra Aqua sweet spot on activation, a lighter boost than the Slimey Bobber.
The 
Leafy Bobber causes leaf-shaped sweet spots to appear at random during the minigame. The Frugal Bobber gives a chance that fish will not consume bait when they bite, helping you conserve expensive baits during long sessions.
The Impatient Bobber reduces lure time, attracting fish faster after casting. The Frog Bobber makes the bobber behave like a frog in the water.
All Fish in Starcatcher
Starcatcher adds 130 fish entries across six rarity tiers: Trash, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. Each fish has a set of catch conditions recorded in the Guide, covering dimension, biome, elevation, time of day, weather, season, fluid type, and required bait. The Guide entry for each fish becomes visible once you catch it, and unknown fish appear as silhouettes until caught.
The tiers scale in both condition complexity and minigame difficulty. Trash and Common fish have minimal requirements and appear throughout the Overworld, while Epic and Legendary entries lock you into specific dimensions, elevations, or rare weather windows. Use the table below as a quick reference for what each tier demands — and check your in-game Guide for exact per-fish conditions once you have a catch recorded.
Count
Dimensions
Key Conditions
Notes
Starcatcher adds 130 fish entries across six rarity tiers: Trash, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. Each fish has a set of catch conditions recorded in the Guide, covering dimension, biome, elevation, time of day, weather, season, fluid type, and required bait. The Guide entry for each fish becomes visible once you catch it, and unknown fish appear as silhouettes until caught.
Secrets and Lore
Starcatcher includes a hidden lore system built around collectible bottles and secret notes. These items are found by fishing in specific locations and dimensions, and each bottle contains a piece of a larger story told through found-world writing. They are tracked in the Secrets section of the Starcatcher's Guide.
Bottles
There are seven bottle types in total. The 
Drifting Waterlogged Bottle is fished from ocean surfaces and is the most accessible entry point, while the 
Hopeful Bottle and 
Hopeless Bottle are also caught from the ocean and serve as story contrasts.
The 
Burning Bottle and 
Scalding Bottle are found in the Nether using lava fishing. The 
Withered Bottle requires a specific bait, and the 
True Blue Bottle is a mysterious ocean-fished entry containing a cryptic poem. Each bottle has a one-time catch limit, making them non-farmable collectibles.
Secret Notes and the Letter System
Secret Notes are old lore fragments obtained through bottles. Right-clicking a bottle in the correct context delivers its note, which presents a dated journal entry continuing an ongoing narrative.
The 
Waterlogged Satchel is another source of secrets, yielding a random selection of rare items including rod skins, cosmetic smithing templates, and occasionally the 
Fish Radar. Letters are craftable items that let players write their own messages and seal them in a bottle to cast into the world.
Starcatcher Tips for Success
Stay calm and prioritize accuracy over speed. The minigame rewards controlled timing far more than rapid pressing. Treat each sweet spot as its own moment rather than trying to chain hits frantically.
The goal is to build progress without losing control of the bar. Once you find your rhythm, the minigame becomes more manageable, even on harder fish.
Legendary fish demand a completely different mindset. Go into a Legendary catch expecting a long fight, not a quick pull. These fish have high HP pools and often apply modifiers that punish impatience.
Equip the Heavy Hook before tackling your first Legendary to slow sweet spot movement and give yourself more time to aim. Have enough 
Legendary Bait on hand, since a failed catch consumes the bait anyway.
Use the Starcatcher's Guide to plan which fish to target next. The Guide shows every catch condition for each fish once you have caught it. Check surrounding entries in the same biome tag for clues about overlapping conditions, as fish descriptions often hint at time of day, weather, or bait preference.
Treasures are rare but not impossible, and items drop from fishing too. Do not focus exclusively on triggering treasure chests. Many items, including hooks, can drop directly from the standard fishing process without a treasure event.
Equipping the Shiny Hook increases your treasure rate on uncommon fish by giving you a bonus trigger after three-hit streaks, making it useful when farming for upgrades.
Meteorological Bait saves enormous amounts of time when filling the catalog. Weather and daytime restrictions cut off large portions of the fish pool during the wrong conditions. A single Heart of the Sea produces 32 Meteorological Baits, bypassing every time-of-day and weather gate in the mod.
If you are sitting on uncatalogued fish requiring clear weather or nighttime, a few Meteorological Baits will open all of them at once.
Frequently Asked Questions
Hold the hook or Bobber in your hand, then crouch and right-click on the Starcatcher's Rod in your inventory or hotbar. The attachment will swap onto the rod. You can only have one hook and one bobber equipped at a time.
Yes. The mod introduces its own rod and system alongside the vanilla fishing mechanic. Players who prefer the standard rod can continue using it normally. The Starcatcher system only activates when you are holding the Starcatcher's Rod.
Most fish have multiple stacked conditions beyond just the biome. Check the Starcatcher's Guide entry for elevation, time of day, weather, season, fluid type, and required bait. A fish that requires underground elevation will not bite at the surface even in the correct biome. All conditions must be met simultaneously.
To fish in Nether lava, simply cast your Starcatcher's Rod into any lava pool in the Nether dimension. For Overworld lava lakes, you need the 
Amethyst Hook equipped, which enables lava fishing in the Overworld without requiring you to enter the Nether.
Fisherman's Hats are cosmetic headgear items available in all 16 dye colors. They are found rarely in Shipwreck chests throughout the ocean. Each hat is purely decorative and provides no gameplay benefit beyond appearance. The Curios mod integration allows them to be worn in a dedicated cosmetic slot if that mod is also installed.
The Fish Radar is a handheld gadget that displays the fish catchable in your current area in a futuristic readout. It is found inside Waterlogged Satchels, which are rare fishing drops from ocean and underground water sources. You cannot craft the Fish Radar, so farming Waterlogged Satchels is the only route to obtaining one.
