Destiny 2 Focused Fishing: Rewards, Locations & Exotics (2024)

Who could have imagined that fishing would someday be a legitimate activity in Destiny 2? Yet here we are. Fishing is now available in Destiny 2, it is fun and offers excellent rewards.

We’ll cover everything you need to know about fishing in this guide, including how to fish, where, and how to farm its top-tier rewards.

How to unlock fishing in Destiny 2

In order to unlock fishing, you’ll need to progress through the Season of the Deep story. Don’t worry, though; you just need to complete a few steps from Week 1 Quest steps.

After completing the Salvage and Deep Dive missions for the first time, you can visit Hawthorne at the Tower. She’ll introduce you to the essential fishing mechanics to get you started via a short quest that will take you to all three fishing locations currently in the game.

Destiny 2 Fishing locations

There are three different fishing holes in the game:

• The Cistern – Nezzus
• Outskirts – The EDZ
• Miasma – Throne World

After visiting these three locations for the first time, you can return to Hawthorne for 10 free baits and fully unlock fishing in Destiny 2.

How to fish: Finding Bait and Fishes

Fishing requires two different resources: Bait and Fish.

Bait can be acquired by completing Salvages, Deep Dives, Playlist activities, Public events & Patrols, and collecting Planetary materials. As a general rule of thumb, the longer the activity, the more bait it rewards. As such, completing a Deep Dive can reward you with up to 19 bait, whereas collecting Planetary Materials will reward you only 1 bait. You can carry up to 500 bait at any given time.

Fish can only be acquired from one of the three fishing holes listed above. We have a full list of Fish in Destiny 2 here. When it comes to the actual fishing mechanics, I strongly believe that a picture (or video) is worth a thousand words; therefore, I recommend you can check this video from EK1 Gaming instead!

How to catch Exotic fish in Destiny 2

To catch Exotic fish, you’ll need to increase your chances of getting rarer fish (Legendary and Exotic) as much as possible.

To do this, you want to aim for a Perfect Catch, which occurs when you reel in the fish as soon as it bites. Also, the higher your Focused Fishing meter, the higher your chances of getting Legendary and Exotic fish. More on that below.

Focused Fishing in Destiny 2

Focused Fishing is the meter mechanic that will allow you to rarer fishes. While fishing, you’ll see the Focusing Fishing meter appear, and the higher the meter, the higher your chances of finding rarer fish.

You can increase the Focused Fishing meter by fishing with other Guardians and fishing for as long as possible. For that reason, you’ll want to start fishing as soon as a fishing hole appears. Keep in mind that the same meter applies to everyone fishing on that spot, not only you. To increase your drops rate as much as possible, you should always fish in the weekly featured Pond. You can visit the Fishing Tackle on your inventory to see what fishing pond is featured at any given time:

Last but not least, when a Public Event, the fishing pond completely disappears, restarting the Focusing Meter…

Destiny 2 Fishing Rewards

Fishing is one of the quintessential activities that all true MMOs offer, and I’m glad Destiny 2 now supports it. But the real reason you’ll be fishing is to get some of the top-tier rewards it can offer.

To earn rewards from fishing, you need to catch fish and turn it at the aquarium located at the H.E.L.M. This can reward you with Reckoning weapons, armor, exotics, and more, depending of the rarity of the fish you managed to catch:

• Legendary Fish can reward you with Legendary gear, including Reckoning weapons, or keys
• Exotic Fish can reward you with Exotic items, such as Ascendant Shards, Exotic armor, and more

Reckoning weapons

While Reckoning weapons can be later focused at the H.E.L.M., you’ll first need to discover each weapon by fishing.

Art	Weapon	Type	Archetype	Rarity	Ammo	Element	Requirements	In loot pool?	Ammo?	Element?	Tier	Excels	Source	Craftable?	Requires	Released	Slot	Can be Crafted?	Best of?	Top Perk?
	Spare Rations	Hand Cannon	Adaptive	Legendary	Primary	Kinetic	Season 21	Yes	Primary	Kinetic	Average ❘ B	PvP	Fishing		Season 21	Season 21	Kinetic	No		Kinetic Tremors
	Outlast	Pulse Rifle	Rapid-Fire	Legendary	Primary	Solar	Season 21	Yes	Primary	Solar	Average ❘ B	PvP	Fishing		Season 21	Season 21	Energy	No
	Sole Survivor	Sniper Rifle	Adaptive	Legendary	Special	Arc	Season 21	Yes	Special	Arc	Average ❘ B	PvE	Fishing		Season 21	Season 21	Energy	No		Voltshot
	Bug-Out Bag	Submachine Gun	Adaptive	Legendary	Primary	Solar	Season 21	Yes	Primary	Solar	Average ❘ B	PvE	Fishing		Season 21	Season 21	Energy	No		Incandescent
	Last Man Standing	Shotgun	Aggressive	Legendary	Special	Solar	Season 21	Yes	Special	Solar	-		Fishing		Season 21	Season 21	Energy	No
	Just in Case	Sword	Adaptive	Legendary	Heavy	Solar	Season 21	Yes	Heavy	Solar	-		Fishing		Season 21	Season 21	Heavy	No		Incandescent

Reckoning weapons also feature a unique Origin trait.

-	Trait	Source	Activation | Effects	Specs	Source Type	Released
	Disaster Plan	Reckoning weapons	Picking up ammunition increases this weapon's flinch resistance and range, which lasts until it is fired again. Swords gain a large increase to charge rate instead.	-	Activity	Season 21

We cover the returning Reckoning weapons in detail here.

Before you go…

These are some of our latest guides featuring many of the exciting new features delivered with Season of the Deep:

• New Exotic Armor
• New Exotics
• New Armor sets
• Deep weapons