Fishing

Fishing is a feature originally introduced in The Sims: Vacation, and brought into The Sims 2 with The Sims 2: Seasons expansion. In Seasons, if a pond is deep enough, fish will appear in it throughout the seasons. These fish, and slightly less appetizing specimens, can be caught by selecting a Sim and clicking on the pond in question.

Caught fish can be cooked to make new meals, hung up or sold as part of a business.

As a Sim gains experience by fishing, they can earn talent badges (in The Sims 2) or skill points (in The Sims 3). With experience, Sims can use different baits and catch rarer fish.

Fishing is very useful for meals also. If you cook fish the food will fill up your hunger bar faster.

Additionally, fish can be sold without using Open For Business. Once placed on the wall or floor, they can be deleted like any other item and net plenty of money. Fishing and selling fish is a good career for a parent Sim who needs to stay home with babies or toddlers, a good hobby to get extra cash, or a way child Sims can help with the bills.

Here is a list of the amount of money each fish can be sold for:

BOOT- §15

LARGEMOUTH BASS- §33

JUMBO LARGEMOUTH BASS- §61

BLUE CATFISH- §49

RAINBOW TROUT- §87

JUMBO RAINBOW TROUT- §221

And the rare GOLDEN TROUT- §518

Actually, the golden trout isn't too rare- as long as you have the Gold talent badge for fishing and your Sim is fishing for a long period of time, these can be caught.

These small amounts of Simoleons may not seem like much, but keep in mind that one Jumbo Rainbow Trout is equal in value to an entire day of work for most beginning jobs, and two Golden Trouts are an average day of work for a level 9 or 10 career.

In about 6 or 7 hours of fshing with a Gold talent badge, I have earned over §6000.

The Sims 2
Fish types include: Boot, Largemouth Bass, Blue Catfish, Rainbow Trout and the elusive Golden Trout. All have Giant varieties as well, however, Golden Trout does not possess a 'small' size.

Badges
Sims gained fishing talent badges with experience in The Sims 2.

No badge

 * Bait: Worm Bait


 * Fish: Boots, Largemouth Bass

Bronze Badge

 * Bait: Riverblossom Minnow


 * Fish: Blue Catfish

Silver Badge

 * Bait: Stink Ball Bait


 * Fish: Rainbow Trout

Gold Badge

 * Bait: Sparkle Spinner


 * Fish: Golden Trout

The Sims 3


In The Sims 3 fishing will be featured, a blog on TheSims3.com written by Eric Holmberg-Weidler talks about fishing and gardening skill, he speaks of a fish one of his Sims fished up, "He reeled in what felt like an unusually small fish. Grabbing it out of the water, he stared into the malevolent, blood-red eyes of an almost pitch-black fish.  Tiny fangs protruded from either side of its mouth."

You can collect fish in The Sims 3 and have to go all around Sunset Valley to find them. For example if you fish in the Sunset Valley Cemetery pond at midnight you can catch Death Fishes and Vampire Fish.