Manor Lords – Fishing Guide

Fishing Guide for Beginners

How Ponds Work

In Manor Lords, all fish ponds work the same way. They get more fish at the start of March, April, and May each year. The number of new fish depends on how many are already there. The pond gets 50% more fish each time, as long as it’s not full.

A normal pond can hold up to 352 fish (32 for each fishing spot). You can increase this to 705 fish by choosing the “Advanced Pondkeeping” option. A rich pond can hold up to 715 fish (65 for each fishing spot). This can also be doubled with “Advanced Pondkeeping” to a maximum of 1,430 fish.

All ponds have 11 fishing spots. These are places where one worker can fish. This limits how many people can fish at once and how many fish can be caught in a month.

The “Advanced Pondkeeping” option does two things:

• It lets you keep more fish, which means more fish will be born.
• It lets you fish slower outside of breeding season, even in winter when the ponds are frozen. This helps spread out your fish supply over the year and reduce waste.

About map creation: You won’t find berry bushes and a pond in the same area. These are meant to be easy food options at the start, so having both would be too much. You can still build forager huts to get herbs, which help sick workers get better faster. Herbs grow like vegetables in the gardens, but you need to assign a family to the forager hut. To get berries or dyes, you’ll need to trade with other regions you own, trade with others, or buy them from towns outside your area.

Optimization

Let’s look at the math. If we set our fishing limit to 67% of the pond’s capacity, at the start of March we’d gain 50% more fish, bringing us back to 100% capacity. This seems good at first. But we need to think about April and May too. We’d need to reach 67% again by the end of March to avoid going over capacity when April starts. Then at the end of April, we’ll see another 50% increase in the remaining fish. So our goal is to fish quickly enough in March and April to make the most of the spawning fish without overfilling the pond.

Fishing Pool (352 fish) / Goal: Have 235 fish before March

In March, the fish count goes up to 352. This is the most the pool can hold. We can catch fish to get back to 235 with about 4 families. Put their houses near the pool. Also build a big storage building close by. Make sure it has enough workers to empty the fish quickly so less food goes bad.

This will happen again in April and May. After that, you could stop fishing until next March. If you want to fish all year, use only 1 family from May onwards. They’ll probably catch more than 17 fish each month. Catching 17 per month would be perfect to reach 235 fish by the end of November, before the pool freezes.

Here’s how the fish numbers would change each month:

This plan should give us 352 fish every year.

Advanced Fishing Pool (704 fish) / Goal: Have 370 fish before March

This time, we can’t fish fast enough to keep up with the +50% fish growth that happens three times. Use about 5 or more families to fish. The 11 fishing spots will almost always be used, giving us 145 fish per month. This is the most we can get.

In May, you can reduce the number of families fishing to just one. They will probably reach the 370 fish limit before March. Because of the new skill, we can now fish during winter too!

This plan should give us 624 fish every year.

Rich Fishing Pool (715 fish) / Goal: Have 373 fish before March

This is almost the same as a regular pool with the special skill. But there’s no winter fishing, so keep 2 families fishing from May until it snows.

This plan should give us 632 fish every year.

Rich Fishing Pool with Advanced Skills (1,430 fish) / Goal: Have 585 fish before March

This is the best fishing spot! It’s great for people who eat fish, which is good because the Church says no meat for up to 150 days. Fish and beaver count as okay to eat during this time.

Use 5 or more families to keep all fishing spots busy. This gives us 145 fish in March and April. In May, we can reduce the number of families fishing, but 3 are needed to reach 585 fish before next March. We can now fish in winter too, which helps us reach this goal.

This plan should give us 1,135 fish every year! That’s enough to feed almost 95 families for a whole year with just fish.

Spoilage

It’s crucial to store fish properly in the game. Don’t leave fish in the fishing hut pantries for too long, especially in hot weather. Move it quickly to an upgraded granary. This is important for two reasons:

• To prevent the pantries from getting too full
• To reduce spoilage

Fish spoils faster than any other food in the game. In the pantries, you lose 10% of your fish at the start of each month. In a granary, this drops to 7%. For best results, move fish to food stalls where it won’t spoil at all. You can also sell it to cities outside the map, which doesn’t cause spoilage either.

Remember, there’s no salted fish option in the game yet to help with preservation.