If you learned Fishing Planet before the middle of 2026, a fair amount of what you know about the first few waterways is now out of date. That is not an exaggeration. On 11 June 2026, the Back to Basics: First Levels Rework went live on Steam and Epic Games, and it did something this freshwater fishing simulator has rarely bothered to do. It went back to the beginning and rebuilt it.
Lone Star Lake, the waterway almost every angler in this game has cast a line into, was reconstructed from the ground up. Lesní Víla Fishery got the same treatment. Marker buoys that players had spent hundreds of hours placing were pulled off the water and handed back to their inventories. Six new fish species were seeded across the early and mid game maps. And a handful of quiet interface changes solved problems that have frustrated new players since launch.
Everything below was checked in game on a level 106 account after the update landed, including the full species roster, the rental kayak specifications and the new shop tools. If you are starting fresh, the game you are playing is meaningfully different from the one described in most guides and videos online. If you are coming back after a long break, your muscle memory for the first three maps is only partly reliable.
What changed at Lone Star Lake
The waterway was expanded, not just re-textured. Four new locations were added: Home Sweet Home, Kayak Rentals, Lakeside Grill Area, and Beaver Dam. That is a genuine increase in fishable water rather than a cosmetic pass, and it is the reason older spot advice for this lake no longer lines up with the geography.
The new areas are not just labels on a map either. Lakeside Grill Area is a proper lit terrace with a fire pit and lounge chairs facing the water. Beaver Dam lives up to its name, with chewed stumps and fallen timber lying in the shallows, which in this game usually signals structure worth casting to. Kayak Rentals sits on its own dock complete with storage racks and, tellingly, a Guadalupe Bass information board planted right beside it.
Kayaks are now available here as well, either rented on site or brought from your own inventory. On a level one waterway that changes the shape of an entire session. You are no longer limited to whatever you can reach on foot along the bank, which means the productive water is not where it used to be. If you built your early game routine around a fixed set of shoreline pins, that routine needs rebuilding.
What it costs and what you can take out there
Three practical details worth knowing before you open the globe map. Travel to Lone Star is still free, so a trip here costs you nothing but the licence. The lake sits at level one and only needs a Basic Texas licence. And despite the new water access, the kayak is the only vessel type unlocked here. Motor boats, bass boats and the fishing yacht all show as unavailable, so do not plan a session around them.
The lake is also busy again. Two separate checks of the globe screen showed between five and six hundred anglers fishing it simultaneously, which for a starter waterway two months after a rework says something about how many people came back to look.
There is a smaller change here that deserves more attention than it got. The local shop at Lone Star now carries the same assortment and the same prices as the Global Shop. In practice, a brand new angler can now see the full range of rods, reels, lines and terminal tackle available in the game from their very first location, instead of discovering three waterways later that better options existed the whole time. If you are still working out what to buy at this stage, our Level 5 spinning setup guide covers the reasoning behind those early purchases.
Why your marker buoys were removed
This is the change most likely to make a returning player assume something broke. Because Lone Star Lake and Lesní Víla Fishery were completely redesigned, every marker buoy previously placed on those two waterways was removed and returned to inventory. Nothing was destroyed. You can place them again whenever you like. But the old coordinates no longer correspond to anything meaningful, so leaving them in place would have been actively misleading.
Ghent-Terneuzen Canal is the trickier case, and the one worth flagging. The waterway itself was not redesigned, so the buoys there were left exactly where players put them. However, the fish bite system underneath them was significantly reworked. Your markers are still sitting in spots that may no longer produce anything. This is the kind of thing that quietly ruins a session and leaves you blaming your tackle setup instead of your map. If you fish that canal regularly, treat every existing buoy as unverified until you re-test it.
The Angler’s House and Trophy Room
The Home Sweet Home location finally earns its name. There is now a personal house you can walk into, and inside it a Trophy Room with space to display your best catches, achievements and mounts collected from waterways all over the world. The house and the ground around it also hide a number of interactive objects, so it rewards wandering rather than walking straight to a wall and hanging a fish on it.
It is a proper interior rather than a menu screen dressed up as one. A lit stone fireplace, a vaulted ceiling, a landing net hung on the wall, and a mounted marlin over the mantelpiece for anyone who has been out to saltwater. Wall panels change to display your mounts, so the room fills in as your collection grows rather than sitting finished from day one.
Is it gameplay? Not really. It is a progression sink, a place for the game to show you what you have done over the years. Whether that lands depends entirely on why you play. Anglers chasing leaderboard positions will walk past it. Anglers who play because casting a line is relaxing will probably rate it the best thing in the update.
The new StarRanger trolling kayak
Two separate things happened here, and it is worth keeping them apart because one costs money and the other does not.
The headline addition is the StarRanger Pedal Trolling Kayak. Because it is driven with your legs rather than your arms, you no longer have to stop and recover stamina while crossing water, which removes a real friction point from trolling. It carries two rod holders, letting you troll with up to three rods at once for more fish, XP and credits per trip, and it comes with a built in Echo Sounder for locating fish rather than guessing.
Be clear about how you get one, though. The StarRanger arrives inside the StarRanger Kayak Pack, which also bundles seven days of Premium, extra Baitcoins, twenty marker buoys, storage extensions, repair kits, and unlimited Advanced Licenses for Lone Star Lake, Mudwater River and Emerald Lake. That is a paid pack, not a free unlock.
The free Outrider rental, and what you give up
The part that matters for free players is the rental. An Outrider Trolling Kayak sits permanently on the dock at Lone Star, and the rental window prices a full day at zero credits. Not discounted, not premium locked. Free.
| Outrider Trolling Kayak | Specification |
|---|---|
| Length | 3.3 m |
| Width | 120 cm |
| Weight | 45 kg |
| Max speed | 7 km/h |
| Passenger capacity | 1 |
| Echo sounder | None |
| GPS | None |
| Rod holders | 1, for spinning and casting rods |
| Rental price | 0 credits per day |
That table makes the trade off concrete. The paid StarRanger gives you two rod holders and an echo sounder, so you can troll three rods at once and actually see where the fish are. The free Outrider gives you one rod holder and no sonar at all, which means you are trolling blind with a single line. It still gets you across the water, and for a level one lake that is most of the value, but it is a mobility upgrade rather than a fishing upgrade.
One detail worth testing yourself before you assume the pedal drive is a free lunch. Pedalling the rented Outrider across the lake ran a meter down from 59 percent to 28 percent over a short crossing, so the rental does appear to consume something as you go. Whether the StarRanger behaves differently is the question, because the no stamina claim is attached specifically to that model rather than to pedal kayaks in general. Plan your first long crossing with that in mind.
Practical note on timing: the rental runs on a real clock rather than the in game day, so the interface counts down from roughly 24 hours once you take it out. You do not need to rush your session.
Six new fish species and where to find them
Six new freshwater fish were added across the affected waterways, spread deliberately rather than dumped into one location.
| Waterway | New species |
|---|---|
| Lone Star Lake | Threadfin Shad, Yellow Bass, Guadalupe Bass |
| Mudwater River | Shortnose Gar |
| Rocky Lake | Greenback Cutthroat Trout, Longnose Dace |
| Quanchkin Lake | Yellow Bass |
The Guadalupe Bass is the one to pay attention to. It is endemic to Texas in real life, and in game it is the only species at Lone Star available in all three fish forms including Unique. The in game location description goes further and states outright that the Unique Guadalupe Bass is found nowhere else in the game. That is unusual for a starter lake. It means a level one waterway now holds a genuine long term collection target rather than a stepping stone you leave behind at level twelve.
The developers clearly agree it is the headline fish, since they planted a dedicated Guadalupe Bass information board next to the Kayak Rentals dock. If you are hunting one, that board is a reasonable place to start reading before you push off.
Rocky Lake, Quanchkin Lake and Ghent-Terneuzen Canal also received bite rate adjustments alongside their new residents, so catch rates you had memorised may feel different now.
The complete Lone Star Lake fish list after the rework
Here is the part that older guides simply cannot give you. Post rework, Lone Star Lake holds fifteen fish species across twenty two catchable fish forms. The in game species counter tracks forms rather than species, which is why it reads out of twenty two rather than out of fifteen, and it is the reason so many returning anglers think they have completed the lake when they have not.
| Species | Available forms |
|---|---|
| Blacktail Shiner | Common |
| Bluegill | Common, Trophy |
| Channel Catfish | Young |
| Golden Shiner | Common |
| Grass Pickerel | Common |
| Green Sunfish | Common |
| Guadalupe Bass | Common, Trophy, Unique |
| Largemouth Bass | Young |
| Redear Sunfish | Common, Trophy |
| Smallmouth Buffalo | Common |
| Spotted Bass | Common |
| Threadfin Shad | Common, Trophy |
| Warmouth | Common, Trophy |
| White Crappie | Common, Trophy |
| Yellow Bass | Common |
A few things jump out of that table. Channel Catfish and Largemouth Bass appear here in Young form only, so if you are hunting a Trophy Largemouth this is not the lake for it. Six species offer a Trophy form, which is more than a starter waterway usually carries. And the Senior Limnologist achievement, which asks for every species in Unique form, is far narrower than it sounds, because only the Guadalupe Bass reaches Unique here.
Starter baits that actually work on day one
Two species are worth targeting immediately because they bite readily and their preferred baits cost almost nothing.
Bluegill is the most forgiving fish on the lake and it carries a Trophy form, so it stays useful well past your first session. It takes dough balls, crickets, red worms and maggots on bait rigs, and responds to nano spoons, nano spinners, tubes and grubs if you would rather fish a light spinning setup. That range makes it the ideal species to learn tackle balance on, because almost anything cheap will produce a bite.
Blacktail Shiner is narrower. It only takes dough balls and semolina balls, and only comes in Common form. It is a small fish, rarely more than a couple of hundred grams, and it prefers flowing water with little vegetation. Not a money maker, but a fast way to fill early mission requirements.
Both are float and bottom fishing targets rather than lure work, which is why a cheap spinning rod plus a handful of dough balls remains the most efficient opening loadout on this lake.
A rebuilt tutorial and the new Adventure Missions
The Tight Lines tutorial was rebuilt. It now begins at Lone Star Lake, Kayak Rentals, and walks new anglers through casting, landing a fish, travelling between pins, and selling a catch.
That last item deserves a moment, because it fixes the single most common panic in this game. Scroll far enough through any Fishing Planet forum and you will find some version of the same post: I am catching fish but I have no money, is the game broken? It never was. Fish are sold when the fishing day ends, and you need a keepnet to hold them in the first place. Building that into the tutorial removes an entire category of new player confusion that community volunteers have been answering by hand for years.
The tutorial then grows into Adventure Missions, chains that guide you toward productive fishing spots and reward upgraded Tablet firmware. They start at Lone Star and continue at Lesní Víla Fishery. The mission tracker now sits permanently in the corner of the screen with the current objective spelled out in full, right down to the hook size and minimum line test a given setup requires, which is a small thing that saves a lot of menu diving.
Changes at Lesní Víla Fishery and Mudwater River
Lesní Víla received more than a facelift. It got a visual pass across terrain and shoreline, its own mission chain, and a reworked bite map. Finishing those missions unlocks the Lesní Víla Map firmware, giving you a detailed map of the waterway.
Mudwater River was not left out either. Kayaks can be brought there or rented on site, the bite map was updated, and predator trolling was added to the river. That last change is worth testing if you have been fishing it with a static casting approach, which we cover in our Level 6 casting setup guide.
Shop and interface improvements
Setup Compatibility, the change that saves you credits
Buried in the interface notes is the single most valuable addition in this update for anyone still learning tackle balance. Item cards in the shop now carry a Compatible Setups button, and clicking it lists every rod and reel type that will actually work with the item in front of you.
It is not limited to rods and reels either. Open a lure card, say one of the new Mini Bass Jigs at 9 grams on a size 2 hook, and the same Compatible Setups button sits right there beside the 3D preview. For a new angler that is the difference between buying a lure that fits your rig and buying one that sits in storage forever.
If you have ever bought a reel and discovered at the water’s edge that it will not mount to anything you own, you know why this matters. Mismatched tackle is the fastest way to waste credits in the early game, and until now the only real defence was memorising compatibility charts on community sites.
The wider equipment setup flow improved alongside it. Placeholder icons now indicate what type of item belongs in each slot, the rules behave more consistently across different setups, hints explain what is missing or equipped in the wrong order, and selecting an empty slot automatically switches to the right item category. None of this is glamorous. All of it reduces the number of trips you waste on a rig that was never going to work.
Inventory, Time Forward and results screens
Inventory management got a proper pass. There is a new All Items category with expand and collapse, plus a search box, so you no longer scroll through every section hunting for one hook size. You can also move entire subcategories between Backpack and HomeStorage, with a confirmation window showing what is moving and how much space you have left. Individual items move in a single click.
The Time Forward window is clearer too. Its chart is now labelled Fish Activity so it is obvious what you are reading, Next Morning was renamed Next Day, and there is a reminder that advancing the day sells all your fish. That is the same beginner trap addressed in the tutorial, closed from a second direction.
End of day and trip results screens were redesigned to present rewards, catches, location details and completed challenges more legibly, and a new Level Up window shows what you have just unlocked along with the next waterway ahead of you. The shop itself received cleaner top navigation, better organised filters, more convenient search and sorting, and noticeably better controller mapping for submenus, item selection, 3D preview and description scrolling. Local shops at Lesní Víla, Mudwater and Ghent-Terneuzen were expanded as well.
New competitions, achievements and baits
Competitive play now starts on map one. Four new competitions were added: Texas Bass Kayak Rodeo, Buffalo South Round-Up, Chasing the Sun, and Gar-Mageddon Mud Battle over at Mudwater River.
Two achievements arrived with them, both requiring you to catch every species on a waterway in Unique form: Senior Limnologist at Lone Star Lake, and Hydrobiologist-engineer of the Lesní Víla Fishery.
On the tackle side the update brought three new colour variations for Bass Jigs, a new Dragonfly Nymph bait, and three Texas themed lures. The Mini Bass Jig in pink and white is the one you will see most often, a 9 gram head on a size 2 hook. Bass jigs in this game behave the way they do in real life: a weed guard, an internal rattle, and a silicone or fibre skirt that pulses as the jig enters the water and quivers as you drag it along the bottom. If you already run a feeder or bottom rig, the new Dragonfly Nymph is worth a look too, and our Level 8 to 11 feeder setup guide for Emerald Lake covers how that style of rig is built.
Updated ambient audio across eight waterways
A gradual rework of the game’s audio has begun. Lone Star Lake, Lesní Víla Fishery, Mudwater River, Rocky Lake, Emerald Lake, Neherrin River, Ghent-Terneuzen Canal and White Moose Lake all received completely new ambient sound, covering birds, wind, rain and weather. The developers suggest starting with every audio slider at maximum to hear what has been added before dialling it back to taste, which is reasonable advice for a single session. More waterways are scheduled to get the same treatment in later patches.
The full Premium benefits list
The update also came with a rewritten in game Premium description, because the benefit list had grown for years without being properly restated. The core benefits are plus 50 percent XP from catches, plus 50 percent credits from fish sales, one extra daily mission, and a 50 percent shorter forward time cooldown. On top of that sit reductions of 50 percent to navigation buoy teleport cooldown, groundbait mixing time, groundbait load time and repair costs.
The free perks bundled in are double rewards on level up and rank, free marker buoy painting, free competition registration, free boat rental and free daily mission regeneration. Two features are Premium only: granting the Captain role to other players in Fishing Together, and keeping a Fishing Together session alive while the Captain is offline.
Whether that is worth paying for depends entirely on how many hours a week you play. What is fair to say is that the list is more substantial than most players assume, largely because it had never been presented in one place before.
A checklist for returning anglers
- Re-place your marker buoys on Lone Star and Lesní Víla. They are sitting in your inventory, and the old spots no longer exist.
- Audit your Ghent-Terneuzen buoys separately. They were not removed, but the bite system beneath them was changed.
- Open the fish list on every reworked waterway and check the counter. It tracks fish forms, not species, so it will read lower than you expect.
- Use Compatible Setups before your next tackle purchase. It costs nothing and it will save you credits.
- Rent the Outrider at Lone Star. It is free for a full day, and half the point of the rework is water you previously could not reach.
- Walk the four new areas before you fish them. Beaver Dam in particular has visible structure that did not exist before.
Why older Lone Star Lake guides are out of date
Almost every Lone Star Lake guide written before June 2026, including video walkthroughs with very large view counts, now describes a lake that no longer exists in that form. The same goes for bite maps, hotspot coordinates and spot by spot advice for Lesní Víla Fishery. That is not a criticism of the people who made them. It is simply what happens when a developer rebuilds a location from scratch.
It does mean you should check the date on anything you read about the early game, this article included, and verify in game before committing credits to a setup. We are working through our own early game guides on that basis, and where something no longer matches what is on the water, we would rather say so than quietly leave it up.