Best bait and bait score: tiers, hearts, chopped bait and traps

GONE Studios says bait score decides which species bites rather than how big it is. Every bait has its own score, and bonuses raise it, so the same bait reaches better species later in a run or in a storm.

Since September 2026, bonuses such as beer, the day count and Leviathan's Totem raise bait score and fish value rather than weight. Since April 2026 the tacklebox colours each bait by how good it is, and bait crates can hold chunks of meat and monster corpses. Creatures you kill also become bait, and they're among the highest-scoring baits there are.

None of these were restated in the 1.0 notes. Instruments don't raise bait score: they only improve legendary odds once you already qualify. A January 2026 post also added a 10% early-bird bonus from 6 to 8 am without saying what it multiplies.

Since October 3, 2026, legendary fish need a bait score of at least 175 (it was 200). No bait we know of gets there alone: the heart, the best, scores 99, so a heart needs bonuses worth about 1.77× (175 ÷ 99), and a 70-point bait needs 2.5×.

Once you qualify, the heart doubles your chance; GONE Studios' example turns 1 in 50 into 1 in 25. Hardcore adds 15% and fishing in the legendary circle (the blue electricity under the birds) a further 15%, playing instruments helps, and 1.0's Siren's Conch trinket improves the odds too.

Every way to raise legendary odds

The heart is a catch, not a purchase: GONE Studios added it as a catchable item in November 2025, and TNT fishing can also turn one up. Chop it on the butcher table for the tier 6 heart bait, score 99.

Think before you chop. Dropped in the altar, the same heart revives dead teammates instantly, and in solo a heart sacrificed beforehand revives you instead of ending the run.

After you beat the final boss, the upgraded butcher table gives two hearts; the launch-day hotfix fixed it giving only one.

Put a fish on the butcher table (F by default since July 2026) to chop it into bait. Its value depends on the fish's species and size, and the best chopped bait needs a fish worth at least 60 points. The upgraded table gives two pieces of meat per fish.

The community site lists chopped bait at 25 (small), 40 (medium), 55 (large) and 70 (extra large); GONE Studios' own figure for medium, 40, matches. So a 60-point fish is a choice: feed it to the altar, sell it, or turn it into bait that reaches bigger species.

GONE Studios hasn't published a full bait list. Apart from the heart, these scores come from the community leaderboard site gonefishing.gg, read October 21, 2026. Some look out of date: snake and croc bait match values GONE Studios has since raised, and rabbit differs from its last official figure, as noted below.

Most of the top scores are creatures. In 1.0 every creature except your pets can be killed and used as bait.

In 1.0 the Minnow, Crab and Rabbit/Raccoon traps catch bait overnight, so harvest them each morning; the reworked Bountiful Bait Totem gives each a chance to give two bait instead of one. The new Fish Trap takes bait from your tacklebox, and that bait's value decides which fish it catches. Feed a fish trap from a bait trap and you get fish every day without spending fishing time.

Traps, the Fish Trap upgrade and gold

Bountiful Bait and the other totems

The Glizzy is catfish bait. Since May 2026 the Wels Catfish bites it, and the 1.0 notes confirm the Glizzy catches the Wels Catfish, a Lake fish for which GONE Studios recommended line level 4 or higher.

On the community site, the Glizzy's most common catches this season are Blue Catfish, Catfish and Wels Catfish, from only 12 species in all.