In How to Fish, the physics-based co-op fishing game from Dazed Games, cash comes from one action: selling what you pick up. You do not open a menu or visit a till. Instead, you throw items straight into a shopkeeper’s mouth, and he pays you on the spot.
Quick answer: Pick up an item like a clam with E, walk to the NPC sitting on the wooden bench near the lighthouse, aim at him, and hold Q to throw the item into his mouth. Each clam pays $1, and you can carry up to three items at a time.
How to sell items to the shopkeeper
Selling is a short loop: collect, walk over, throw. The shopkeeper never moves, so once you know where he sits you can repeat the process as fast as you can gather items.
E to pick it up. You can hold three items before your hands are full.![Shoreline item with the Inspect [F] prompt while the How to Buy tutorial is active](https://static.allthings.how/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/how-to-sell-items-in-how-to-fish-5449973840.webp)
Q to throw the held clam into his mouth. A +$1 pops up and your cash goes up, confirming the sale landed.
Q to feed the rest in quick succession. Each throw registers as its own sale.Note: the throw works the same way for every sellable item, not just clams. Fish, guns, and other pickups all go into the shopkeeper’s mouth for cash.
Cook items to sell them for 1.5x more
Raw items sell for their base value, but cooking multiplies that value before you sell. The grill unlocks on island 3 and works on fish, guns, and other sellable items alike.
Press F to inspect an item and watch its Value, cooking multiplier, weight, and killscore update live as it heats. Hold a fish over the grill until its value hits 1.5x, then pull it off right away. The instant it turns solid black it burns, its value drops to $0, and it barely heals, so only ever burn one on purpose if an achievement asks for it.
The island 5 volcano removes the timing risk entirely. Lava cooks items at exactly 1.5x with no chance of burning, so on that island there is no reason to sell anything raw. Drop everything into the lava before it leaves your hands.
Highest-value items to sell
A handful of species carry exact base sell prices in the shipped build. The Goblin Shark leads the fish with a confirmed value, and cooking pushes each figure up by half again.
| Fish | Raw value | Best cooked value |
|---|---|---|
| Goblin Shark | $6,200 | $9,300 |
| Superdwarf Fish | $1,700 | $2,550 |
| Voxel Fish | $340 | $510 |
| Flying Fish | $320 | $480 |
| Clam | $1 | — |
Higher earners exist among the game’s creatures too, including the Mutated Bowhead Whale at $15,000, the Albatross at $13,000, and the Pufferfish at $12,000. Stacking trick-shot multipliers on the kill, such as a full 360 no-scope for another 1.5x, raises a catch’s value even further before you cook it.
Selling something worth $100,000 for Rich! Millionaire
No fish sells for $100,000 on its own, so the Rich! Millionaire achievement checks the value of the item you actually sell, not a catch’s base price. The route runs a cooked fish through the roulette table.
Green sits in just one of 37 pockets, so expect to lose repeatedly before it lands. Carry as many cooked fish as your inventory allows so you can keep betting without farming again between attempts.
Spending your cash on better gear
Cash exists to be reinvested. Head to the store and press E to buy a crab-fishing rod, which lets you catch more valuable creatures and feeds directly back into higher sale values.
For sustained late-game income, farm island 5 with Scientific Lures from the $500 tier, lava-cook the whole haul, and stack kill multipliers on every catch before selling. That loop earns far more per trip than gathering clams on the starting shore, though the throw-into-the-mouth sale remains the same everywhere.
