Graveyard Keeper 2 Fishing: Every Lake and Every Fish

How many lakes can you fish in, and what lives in each?

Six. The shipped data defines 29 live spawn entries across 22 species, each tied to one of six reservoir objects: home, village, port, forest, swamp or sewers. Four further rows are debug entries in an unused test pond. These names are the reservoir ids — the game ships no display name for any of the six.

Water	Fish	Weight	Stock	Regen	Bait
Home	Roach	1000	2	3.0	none
Home	Gudgeon	10	2	6.0	none
Home	Crucian	5	1	6.0	none
Home	Pike	10	1	6.0	Breadcrumb
Village	Roach	1000	2	3.0	none
Village	Gudgeon	10	2	6.0	none
Village	Crucian	10	1	6.0	none
Village	Herring	5	2	6.0	Breadcrumb
Village	Bream	10	2	3.0	Breadcrumb
Village	Mythic Carp	10	1	30.0	Live
Port	Anchovy	10	2	3.0	Breadcrumb
Port	Mackerel	10	2	6.0	Breadcrumb
Port	Goldfish	5	1	3.0	Insect
Port	Tuna	10	2	6.0	Insect
Port	Salmon	10	1	6.0	Insect
Port	Kraken Jr	10	1	30.0	Live
Forest	Carp	10	2	3.0	Breadcrumb
Forest	Pike	10	2	6.0	Breadcrumb
Forest	Goldfish	5	2	3.0	Insect
Forest	Salmon	10	2	3.0	Insect
Forest	Trout	10	1	6.0	Insect
Forest	Celestial Salmon	10	1	30.0	Live
Swamp	Frog	10	5	6.0	none, Breadcrumb, Insect
Swamp	Catfish	10	1	3.0	Breadcrumb
Swamp	Silverfin	10	1	3.0	Breadcrumb
Swamp	Swamp Ghost	10	1	6.0	Insect
Swamp	Eel	10	1	3.0	Insect
Swamp	Elder Catfish	10	1	30.0	Live
Sewers	Eel	10	2	3.0	Insect

Source: gamebalance_full.json → fishingDefs[], fields reservoirId, fishId, baseWeight, baseCount, regenTime, baitMod.resType, excluding the 4 _test rows, build 25509347. Stock and regen are raw floats with no unit in the data.

Home is the only lake that works from day one: three of its four species bite with no bait. Rod requirements and bait recipes are in the main Graveyard Keeper 2 fishing guide.

Which lake do you go to for a specific fish?

Read the reservoir, not the row name. Five of the 29 entries carry an id suffix pointing at the wrong water: the village entry for the Mythic Carp is filed under a forest id, the port’s Goldfish and the swamp’s Silverfin under sewers ids, and the forest’s Salmon and Celestial Salmon under sewers ids too. Only reservoirId is trustworthy.

Seven species swim in two waters, so the home and village overlap is deliberate. Every other species is locked to a single lake, which is what makes the swamp worth the trip: it alone holds Elder Catfish and alone stocks five Frogs. The village row named fish_carp_village also yields Roach, not Carp — hence weight 1000 twice.

Source: gamebalance_full.json → fishingDefs[] fields id, reservoirId, fishId, plus items.csv field name_en, which ships fish_dace to English players as Herring, build 25509347.

What does the anger number on a fish actually mean?

Anger is a live expression, not a static number, and every species subtracts a fixed amount once the Fisherman talent is taken. Roach starts at 2 and loses 1; Elder Catfish starts at 20 and loses 6. The shipped data records neither the unit nor the failure threshold, so read the ladder as a ranking.

Species	Anger	With Fisherman
Roach	2 − 1	1
Gudgeon, Crucian	3 − 1	2
Herring	5 − 2	3
Anchovy	6 − 2	4
Bream	7 − 3	4
Carp	8 − 3	5
Pike, Mackerel, Catfish	9 − 3	6
Frog	10 − 4	6
Tuna	11 − 4	7
Salmon, Silverfin	13 − 5	8
Goldfish	14 − 4	10
Swamp Ghost	14 − 5	9
Trout, Eel	15 − 5	10
Mythic Carp	17 − 6	11
Kraken Jr	18 − 6	12
Celestial Salmon	19 − 6	13
Elder Catfish	20 − 6	14

Source: gamebalance_full.json → fishingDefs[].anger.expressionString (raw form 2-$perk_fisherman); the last column applies PPar("perk_fisherman") = 1, the only value the shipped talent tree assigns to that parameter, build 25509347.

Fisherman sits one node behind two Farming mastery nodes for a single talent point. The ceiling is hard: exactly one node in the whole tree writes the perk_fisherman parameter, so the reduction never exceeds the coefficient shown. The two zombie-side Fisherman perks use separate ones.

What do weight, count, regen and bait time do?

Weight decides how often a species comes up, stock is how many sit in the water, and regen is how fast the supply returns after a catch. Two entries break the pattern hard, and both point the same way: Roach is the filler bite, and the four legendaries are the slow ones.

Roach carries a spawn weight of 1000 while every other species sits at 5 or 10, making it the near-certain catch in the two lakes that hold it. Regen splits into three bands — 3.0, 6.0 and 30.0 — with all four legendaries alone in the slowest. Bait time runs the other way: Roach waits 2.0, the longest in the game, while Celestial Salmon waits 0.7, the shortest.

Do worms bait and shrimp bait work anywhere?

No. The item table defines six baits, but only four are referenced by any spawn entry, and those two are also the only ones with no crafting recipe attached anywhere in the shipped files. Both sit at a base price of 0.

Bait	Base price	Referenced by
No Bait	0	7 entries
Breadcrumb Bait	3	10 entries
Insect Bait	12	10 entries
Live Bait	30	4 entries
Worms Bait	0	0 entries
Shrimp Bait	0	0 entries

Source: gamebalance_full.json → fishingDefs[].baitMod.resType, crafts.csv rows breadcrumb_bite, insect_bite and ultimate_bite, and items.csv rows no_bait through shrimp_bite, field base_price, build 25509347.

Frog is the one entry accepting three baits at once, weighting no bait at 1.0 against 0.25 each for Breadcrumb and Insect, so baiting that lake actually makes Frogs rarer. Live Bait gates every legendary fish and is the costliest of the three real baits, at Lacquer plus Flesh.

What does the first legendary catch actually unlock?

A recipe, permanently, the first time the fish lands. Each legendary carries a tech grant on the catch event itself rather than through the tech tree, so you do not spend a point to get Fried golden carp, Kraken steak, Heavenly salmon or Elder’s meal — you catch the fish.

Legendary	Water	Tech granted	Recipe
Mythic Carp	Village	cooking_fish_leg_carp	Fried golden carp
Kraken Jr	Port	cooking_fish_leg_kraken	Kraken steak
Celestial Salmon	Forest	cooking_fish_leg_salmon	Heavenly salmon
Elder Catfish	Swamp	cooking_fish_leg_catfish	Elder’s meal

Source: gamebalance_full.json → fishingDefs[].expressionsOnEnd for the AddTech calls, and tech_tree.csv rows cooking_fish_leg_carp, _kraken, _salmon, _catfish, build 25509347.

All four are flagged hidden at the start of the tree, so none shows up in a cooking list until you land the fish. The only station needed afterwards is the Kitchen Oven, in the crafting stations list.

Is fishing worth the time for money and mastery?

Yes, and the spread is wide enough to plan around. Fish prices run from 10 for Roach and Gudgeon to 3,600 for Elder Catfish, and each item carries a green talent value that rises with the price rank, from 1 up to 18.

Every catch also adds one point to the Fisher inspiration line, which the data defines as six tiers. Check what a fish is worth against the item prices and selling guide and the vendor buy price matrix before planning a bulk-fish economy — a merchant who does not buy fish wastes the trip. Fillet conversions are on the fishing guide, early traps in the common mistakes guide.