Fishing

There are several opportunities throughout Ōkami to do fishing. This is required a few times to advance the main plot or optional sidequests, but fishing can also be done as simple recreation and to earn yen by selling the fish to merchants. Amaterasu cannot eat the fish to replenish her Astral Pouch, nor feed it to animals in place of a Fish Feedbag.

Where to fish

Amaterasu needs to find a human fisherman to "assist" in catching the fish. If no such partner is available, she cannot go fishing.

Agata Forest

After reviving the Guardian Sapling here, speak to Kokari to start fishing. There are two different plot-required fish to catch at two different points in the story: the Giant Salmon, for the key to open Tsuta Ruins; after clearing that dungeon, and the Whopper, for the Crescent technique. Returning to Agata Forest after catching these two fish allows the player to have normal fishing sessions with Kokari and catch as many fish as they desire, though Giant Salmon and Whopper cannot be caught again. After the moon festival in Kamiki Village, Kokari leaves this area and Amaterasu cannot fish again until Sei'an City. All fish available here can also be caught in Sei'an City, so if the player misses their chance here they will still be able to finish the Fish Tome.

Sei'an City (Aristocratic Quarter)

Amaterasu has to fish here to advance the story. After completing the Digging minigame in the Commoner's Quarter, bring the Blinding Snow fishing rod to Benkei on the giant drawbridge to catch the "Living Sword". Benkei later finds a new fishing spot near the city's Mermaid spring and remains there for the rest of the game. The fish caught here include all of Agata's fish save the two plot fish, as well as a new set exclusive to Sei'an.

North Ryoshima Coast

A local fisherman here (simply named "Fisherman") is located on a long fishing pier on the southwestern island. (If the Water Dragon is still around, Amaterasu may wish to evade it by riding Orca there instead of using Water Lily.) If she brings him the Marlin Rod, he can catch the Giant Marlin to take to Chef Umi's restaurant on the shore, where she can then learn the Whirlwind secret Celestial Brush technique. From then on, Amaterasu can return to the fisherman's pier to fish for an unlimited time. The Coast has a new set of sea fish, and none of the freshwater fish caught in Agata or Sei'an can be found here.

Kamui

Kokari travels here after leaving Agata Forest. After reviving the Guardian Sapling, Amaterasu can find him near the Dojo, where he remains for the rest of the game. There is no plot fishing event here, only freeform fishing, though oddly the Marlin can be re-caught here an unlimited number of times. The fish caught here include three of those that can be caught at North Ryoshima Coast, and Kamui's own unique set.

How to fish

At first, the fisherman just stands there while shadows move in the water. The shadows all have generic fish shapes without indicating any specific "fish" type (such as a nautilus or starfish), but the shadow size does roughly indicate the general caliber of fish. Waiting around will result in the fish fading out and being replace by new fish, which may be of larger or smaller size than the initial set. While waiting, the player is still in control of the camera, and swinging it up to draw a sun or moon is possible and does not end the current fishing session: it simply makes the fisherman react in shock and then "cast" again with their lineless rod.

One a preferred fish is sighted, use the Celestial Brush to draw a path (it need not be straight) from the pole toward the mouth of the desired shadow until black Holy smoke appears, indicating that the fish is close enough to hook. If the player draws a line to the wrong fish, they can either draw onto another fish (only the last fish touched is reeled in, rather like the mechanics of the Thief's Glove) or into empty water to "cancel" catching that fish.

Once the target fish is hooked, all of the other shadows disappear and two different meters appear on the screen: a stress meter centered at the top of the screen, and a stamina meter in the lower right. Reel in the fish by pulling the controls in the opposite direction of its movement. If the pull is effective, the fish will throw off "sweat" drops around its shadow. If it is not "sweating," the fish will be able to swim away from the fisherman. Tapping the stick is more effective than just pulling it all the way over.

The stress meter shows the current strength of the line pull: blue at the ineffective weakest level, green for a strong healthy pull, and red for maximum overstrain. The health meter indicates the overall condition of the fisherman for this fishing session and starts out green at full strength, but when the stress meter hits red, the stamina meter starts to decrease down through a yellow warning stage to red near-exhaustion.

Generally, once the fish is hooked and "sweating", it can be brought in with a series of light control taps that keep the stress meter in the green range, rather than requiring continuous control pressure that quickly overstrains the fisherman.

When the fish is close enough to catch, in most versions a button prompt will appear; in the Wii version, swing the remote upwards. If this is done successfully, the fish will be jerked out of the water, but still needs to be stunned with Power Slash to pull it ashore. Some larger fish will survive the first slash and plunge back into the water, requiring two or even three individual reel-ins and slashes to catch (regardless of any upgrades to the Power Slash technique).

After catching each fish, Amaterasu has the option to end the fishing session or keep going. She can also end the fishing session at any time by pressing the menu button.

The four "plot" fishing minigames (the mandatory three to catch the Giant Salmon, Whopper and the Cutlass Fish and the optional one to catch the Marlin) have two rounds of small fish, and then the plot fish will appear on its own, after which the session automatically ends. In normal fishing sessions things work differently: the session does not end until the player exits the session, the fisherman runs out of stamina, or the player spends too long trying to reel in a single fish. In the latter two cases the fish currently on the line is lost, but there are no other penalties.

As a normal fishing session proceeds, larger and more valuable fish will appear, with the largest only appearing after quite a few catches. The smallest class of fish will eventually stop appearing entirely in a prolonged session, meaning it is important to catch them while they are around if aiming for the trophy / achievement for completing the fish guide in the HD versions. Exiting the session and restarting will reset progress through the fish size scale and return to the smallest types. Aside from the 99 inventory spaces for each fish, there is no limit to how many fish can be caught in a non-plot session. Time continues to pass while fishing and the day / night cycle operates as normal, if not perhaps even a little faster: unlike in normal gameplay, there are no cutscenes for day / night transitions.

As a fish becomes more valuable, there will be alterations to its behaviour when hooked: it will move faster, swim away faster when not "sweating," and change direction more frequently, with very high level fish sometimes thrashing from side to side. Large fish also make the fisherman's stress bar narrower (decreasing the size of the green "sweet spot" area), make the pointer in the stress bar move faster, and deplete stamina at a higher rate when in the red. There are a few fish with special behaviours: for example, the Giant Catfish is extremely slow, but also slow to pull in, and adds an inertia effect to the stress meter so that if the meter is in the red it will stay there much longer than usual.

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