How to Fish Third Island: Desert Island Walkthrough

You arrive on the Desert Island after finishing the Island 2 quest line. The island itself is sandy terrain dotted with palm trees, and those palms matter later — they are your cover in the boss fight, so take note of where they stand while you explore.

Once you settle in, the Tourist on the island hands you the main quest: remove a menacing fish from the ocean. Nothing in the quest text says what the fish is, where to find it, or what bait it wants, which is exactly why this island generates so many confused threads on the Steam forums. The sequence below is the confirmed solution from start to finish.

The first real objective is an endangered creature, and the confirmed tool for the job is the Standard Lure. If you have been experimenting with other bait, switch back to the Standard Lure for this step — it is what the island's quest chain expects. The Lure Guide covers bait options in more detail if you want the broader picture.

Here is the part most players miss: you cannot tell whether a fish is endangered just by catching it. You have to inspect the fish to see whether it is endangered or not, so check every single catch before you do anything else with it. Selling an uninspected catch can quietly throw away the exact item you needed.

The Needle Fish is the standard example of an endangered fish on the third island, and it does not have to be that exact species — sources confirm the Bowl Fish and Sea Horse also work, so hand in whichever endangered catch you land first. For general catching technique, the Fish Guide is worth a read.

Once you are holding an endangered fish, take it to the Tourist — the guy sitting on the island — and feed it to him. In return he gives you the bait you need: the Carrot.

The Carrot is the quest bait for the boss, not food and not something to sell. Treat it the way you treated the endangered fish — a progression item that sits in your inventory until its moment. There is no confirmed way to replace it if lost, so do not experiment with it.

With the Carrot in hand you can summon the Pufferfish, the menacing fish the Tourist wants gone. Use the Carrot as bait to draw it out, and be ready — this is a real boss encounter, not a regular catch, and it is the hardest fight on the island.

The core tactic is movement. Use the palm trees and the island terrain to circle around the Pufferfish instead of standing toe to toe with it. Its most dangerous move is a rolling charge, and keeping terrain between you and the boss gives you the space to dodge it. Stay mobile, keep the palms in the fight, and do not get greedy standing still.

In the second half of the fight the Pufferfish adds poison trails to the mix, which punishes any sloppy pathing. The same circling strategy still works, but you now have to watch the ground as well as the boss.

The fight is very doable in co-op if a friend is struggling with it — the original forum thread about this island came from a duo. How to Fish supports online co-op lobbies of up to 8 players, and the Multiplayer page explains how joining works.

Beating the Pufferfish is not the end of the quest — the island only counts as cleared once you deliver proof. After the kill, pick up the boss's drop, the half-fish trophy piece — most guides call it the Pufferfish Fin, though a couple say Tail. Whatever it is called in your game, it is the quest item that drops from the boss body, and you must physically grab it.

Carry that drop back to the Tourist and hand it over. In return he gives you the coordinates for Island 4, which is the concrete reward for the whole chain and your ticket onward. If the quest seems stuck after the boss dies, the missing piece is almost always the pickup or the delivery, so double-check both before assuming a bug. The Islands hub shows where the Desert Island sits in the overall progression.

Most third-island roadblocks come from the quest's vague wording rather than any real difficulty. Run through this checklist before you assume the game is broken:

• Selling a catch before inspecting it. Endangered status only shows on inspection, and an uninspected sale can cost you the quest item.
• Trying to hook the Pufferfish with a Standard Lure. The Standard Lure is for the endangered fish; the Carrot is the bait that summons the boss.
• Fighting out in the open. Without palm trees between you and the Pufferfish, its rolling charge is far harder to avoid.
• Backtracking across poison trails in the second half of the fight instead of circling fresh ground.
• Walking away after the kill without picking up the drop, or picking it up but never delivering it to the Tourist.
• Assuming the quest is bugged. The sparse instructions are the actual quest design — the Steam thread this guide is built on exists for that exact reason.

Clear those hurdles and the Desert Island is done. The full Walkthrough picks up the route from here, and the Bosses page lists every boss encounter in the game if you want to see what waits on Island 4.