The fish rack on the village square sells a rod for 40 coins as well as suppers. Hold the rod, stand at the water’s edge and press E to cast — the line goes into the nearest water you are facing. Then wait. Somewhere between three and eleven seconds later something takes it, and you have under two seconds to press E again. Pull too soon and the line comes back bare; too late and it is gone.
What you catch depends on where you cast, the same way a sawmill depends on its woodland. The shallows hold silverfry and reedling. Deep water holds riverback, and now and then a mooneye. Water the Gloom has had holds palefin and hollowjaw — and those are not worse fish, they are what fishing the other half of the world gets you.
You can eat a fish raw off the bank, and it will do you a little good. Carry it to a campfire instead — anybody’s campfire, not only your own — and press E to grill the whole catch at once, one wood a fish. Grilled, it is worth two or three times as much: a mooneye off the fire mends more than anything the bakery sells.