Angler's Eye

Angler's Eye is a fishing assistant for Valheim. It tells you which fish is in the water and whether you carry the bait it wants, puts the right bait on your hook when you cast, tells you the moment a fish bites, shows whether a hooked fish is struggling or calm, and estimates whether you have the stamina to land it. It doesn't change how fishing works: stamina costs, fish spawns, bait rules and catches are all vanilla. Client-side, works on vanilla servers, BepInEx only.

Hooked: WAIT while the fish struggles, with the bar underneath draining as the struggle runs out, and the forecast beside it. The panel sits right above the stamina bar.

Waiting for a bite: the label above the float names the fish and says the bait on the hook works, and the panel repeats the fish and the forecast.

Features

1. Fish identification. Look at a fish and its hover text gains its stars and a bait line: the bait it wants and how many you carry (e.g. + (x12)), or ✖ if you carry none. The HUD font has no star glyph, so stars appear as * in hover text. This only works for fish your crosshair can reach — in practice fish at or near the surface; the hover raycast doesn't reach fish further underwater. A small label above your own float names the fish nibbling or heading for it, and says whether the bait on your hook works on it ("bait ok" or "needs <bait>").
2. Smart bait. When you cast, Angler's Eye equips the carried bait that works best on the fish you're aiming at, instead of whatever the game would otherwise pick (the bait you last equipped if you still have it, otherwise the stack nearest the top-left of your inventory). If you carry none of its bait, it names the bait you need and still casts with vanilla's own choice.
3. Bite cue. A hookable nibble makes the panel flash BITE! for exactly as long as you have to hook it, with a short sound.
4. Struggle indicator. While a fish is hooked, the panel shows REEL when it's calm and WAIT when it's struggling, with a bar under WAIT that drains as the struggle runs out. Reeling during a struggle costs more stamina per second and gains only half the line, so waiting it out is the cheaper way to land a fish.
5. Catch forecast. The panel shows can land, tight, or unlikely, worked out from the line length, the fish's level, your Fishing skill and your current stamina.
6. Optional assists, off by default:
   • Smart reel: while you hold Block, it reels only when the fish is calm. Stamina costs stay vanilla — it just does the waiting for you. Fishing skill only rises while the game's own reel code is running, and smart reel skips that during a struggle, so your Fishing skill won't rise for the time it spends waiting one out.
   • Extended hook window: up to 1.5 s to hook a nibble instead of vanilla's 0.5 s.

How it works

Everything comes from data the game already has on your machine: each fish's bait table, its level, and the state of your own float and hooked fish. Nothing is sent to the server, and no fish, bait or drop table is changed.

In vanilla, the right bait always works on a fish that nibbles your float — what's rare is a fish choosing your float at all (roughly a 1-in-10 chance each time it picks a waypoint). That's why Angler's Eye shows bait advice rather than odds by default. Turn on ShowOdds to also show the bait's chance per nibble as a percentage; it's 100% for every vanilla fish, but can differ for a modded one.

The forecast assumes you reel only while the fish is calm and uses average struggle lengths, so it's an estimate. It ignores stamina regeneration, which makes it slightly cautious.

In multiplayer, the fish near your float are simulated by whoever owns that zone. If that's another player, the float label falls back to showing the nearest fish within 10 m of your float, rather than the one actually heading for it.

Configuration

Everything is in BepInEx/config/com.jumpingmushroom.anglerseye.cfg, or in-game with ConfigurationManager (F1). Changes apply immediately.

Console: anglerseye shows what's on and why; anglerseye fish lists every fish's bait and fight numbers.

Compatibility

Angler's Eye steps aside for mods that take over fishing, and says so in the log and in the anglerseye command:

• Hooked: smart bait, the forecast, both assists and the bite and struggle cues turn off. Fish identification stays.
• Trolling Fishing: smart bait, the forecast and both assists turn off. Fish identification and the cues stay.
• Any other mod that patches the float's reeling turns off smart reel; one that patches hooking turns off the extended hook window; one that changes fish stamina costs (e.g. Reely Good Rod) turns off the forecast, since its stamina maths would be wrong.

Installation

Install with r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager, or copy AnglersEye.dll into BepInEx/plugins/. Requires BepInExPack Valheim. Client-side only; nothing is needed on the server.