Daily Debate: Should Rod and Reel Fishing Have Been Re-Introduced in Tears of the Kingdom?
Posted on July 31 2023 by John Furby
Starting way back with Link’s Awakening and its fishing mini-game, angling has been a part of several mainline Legend of Zelda games. Ocarina of Time introduced the fishing hole, where a generation wasted away the hours while Hyrule was on the brink of collapse. Oddly skipping The Wind Waker (a strange exclusion, seeing as you spend most of the quest on a boat sailing the ocean), Twilight Princess gave players a cane pole to fish anywhere; the game also included a fairly involved fishing sim, which could have been its own standalone title à la Link’s Crossbow Training. Apart from a small fishing side quest in Phantom Hourglass and an Ocarina-inspired fishing mode in Majora’s Mask 3D, rod and reel fishing has been largely absent from Zelda games in recent years.
Breath of the Wild certainly had the opportunity for fishing, with an abundance of different types of fish, amphibians, and crustaceans to collect, but noticeably absent from your kit was a fishing pole. If a player wanted to fish, they had to get as creative as an extreme sports fisherman. You can bow fish (and with a shock arrow, stun a whole school at once), fish with “dynamite” (technically the Remote Bomb Rune or bomb arrow), or do some good old fashioned “noodling” (catching a live fish with your bare hands). While all fun methods, I personally missed the opportunity to take a break from saving the world and casting a line into the Hylia River or even deep-sea fishing the Faron Sea.
As we all know now, old-school fishing did not make its return in Tears of the Kingdom either. The extreme sports fishing methods appear in slightly different ways, but there is still no option to simply use a rod and reel. With the Ultrahand ability available to craft just about any contraption imaginable, creating a fishing boat and sailing the seas casting lines and cooking catches on a Zonai Portable Pot would have made me forget all about the plight of post-Upheaval Hyrule, if only for a little while.
There is one Yiga Schematic that offers a new form of fishing unique to Tears of the Kingdom: The Fishing Trawler. A motorboat with a Shock Emitter attached to the bow, this vehicle shocks the fish ahead of you and the shovel-like front scoops up your catch for easy collection.
Maybe our (my) angling wishes will be granted in a future DLC, but for now, I’ll keep tossing shock fruit into the water whenever I’m in the mood for fish.
Are you disappointed that there was no return to rod and reel fishing in Tears of the Kingdom? Do you think there’s room in this massive game for one more activity? Let us know in the comments.
John Furby joined the Writing Team at Zelda Dungeon in mid-2023, and has been a Zelda fan since the age of four in the distant past of 1988. He graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Film/Video with a concentration in Screenwriting. When he’s not spending his free time traveling through the newest incarnation of Hyrule, he raises a sassy and powerful daughter. Somehow he also finds time to collect video games, action figures, comics, VHS, vinyl and cassettes, LEGO, Nintendo Power magazines, and old fancy phones, all while golfing, writing screenplays, editing video, and enjoying a snifter of port at Christmas.
