Thread: Big Fish and You - Patch 2.3

Originally Posted by Desidious

Just as easily caught the Olgi while using a sand gecko to get a mooch from the storm rider. And spoon worm for the fullmoon sardine mooch for the captain's chalice. Just throwing that out there.

This brings up a question I don't think I have seen an answer to. From what I can tell what bait you get to catch the HQ fish for mooching does not seem to affect what will bite the fish being caught with mooch, is this true? My second question would be is there a difference to the various sand baits? Is there less types that bite sand gecko vs sand leech for instance or do fish bite that bait faster than another?

Originally Posted by Uttahutta

is this true? My second question would be is there a difference to the various sand baits?

I'm certain that the bait used to catch the fish you're mooching from is irrelevant to the success rate of the mooch. That said, some bait is better at catching the base fish than others. I use http://na.ff14angler.com to determine which bait is best for catching the base fish for a moochable big fish. Take the Magic Carpet for example. You need an HQ Storm Rider to mooch to the Magic Carpet. See this chart for what the best bait to catch the Storm Rider is: http://na.ff14angler.com/spot/30404. From that list, you can see that Sand Leeches have a 32.5% chance of catching a Storm Rider, where Sand Geckos have only a 15.7% chance. In other words, it'll take you (on average) twice as long to catch a Magic Carpet with Sand Geckos than with Sand Leeches because you'll be catching too many other things (mostly antlion slugs).

Something to beware of when using this site is that weather/time specific conditions are not taken into account, so the numbers can't be trusted for catches that depend on either. For instance, this gives a 3.9% chance of catching a Magic Carpet using an HQ Storm Rider as bait. That's inaccurate, because it includes times fishing during non-heatwave and times fishing during off-hours. However, the charts on that site are a great way of getting info on catching the base fishes, few of which are time dependent. Fullmoon Sardine is the main example of a time-dependent base fish.

Originally Posted by Torquere

Iron Noose has a confirmed (by me) bait of Spinner, Weather: Fog .. I got my first nibble at 4:46 pm, and there is a report of a nibble at 11:?? pm .. I've adjusted the information accordingly.

Why did you choose Spinner out of curiosity? I tried a long time using silver spoon lure as that was the highest % of catch rate for Ropefish so I assumed that would be the bait. Apparently there is no real theory for which bait actually catchs it? Unless it is a mooch of course. I have been trying to theorycraft this one and Spearnose for a long time, I still haven't fished up Spearnose in Goblet >_>

also Hannibal at least 359, caught with that (been trying to catch fish with lower gathering lately to test numbers).