Variants

With every catch, you have a chance to get a variant fish. Variant fish come with a different texture and are highly valuable due to the variant shards used in Rod Parts and Crafting Recipes. When catching a variant fish, a tag is shown at your bobber as you are playing the fishing minigame.

Variant	Base Chance	Value Multiplier	Shard Image	Shard Name
	1/5000	5x		Albino Shard
	1/10000	10x		Melanistic Shard
	1/15000	20x		Trophy Shard
	1/3000 During Fabled Events	30x		Fabled Shard

These variants have collection rewards, providing Money, Power, Bait Packages, and recipe unlocks. These variants have their own category per location compendium and give you Power on completion; the amount of power varies depending on the location.

Variant Chance is a stat you can get to increase your odds of catching a variant fish. The ways to get this stat are from Reels, Poles, Rod Calibration, Legendary Armour rolls and Pet Items. The formula for how variant chance affects your odds is as follows:

Albino:      1/( 5000/[1 + {Variant Chance/100}])
Melanistic:  1/(10000/[1 + [Variant Chance/100}])
Trophy:      1/(15000/[1 + {Variant Chance/100}])
Fabled:      1/( 3000/[1 + {Variant Chance/100}])

So this means that if you had +100% trophy chance your odds for a trophy would go from 1/15000 to 1/7500.

Some events introduce unique variant fish. These variants can only be caught during the duration of the event and do not drop shards.

Variant	Base Chance	Value Multiplier	Upgrades	Event
	1/50 When Catching Salmon at Kenai River	2.5x	Event Booster	Winter 2025
	1/50 When Catching Sharks	2.5x	Event Booster	Shark week 2025
	1/50 When Catching fish at Cypress Lake	2.5x	Event Booster	Halloween 2025