The Fishing Pond turns a base into a passive Pal-catching station. Once built, a worker Pal casts and reels on its own while you explore, and every completed run drops both a caught Pal and a handful of items. It runs on the same fishing loop you’d do by hand, just automated and left to tick over in the background.
Quick answer: Build a Fishing Pond (Level 31), stock it with bait, walk up and press F, choose the shadow size, then hit Start Production. After 15 minutes it finishes, and the caught Pal plus any items land in the chest beside the pond.
Fishing Pond requirements and unlock levels
Two versions exist, and they gate which shadow sizes you can farm. The standard Fishing Pond unlocks in the Technology tree at Level 31 and handles small and medium shadows. The Large Fishing Pond unlocks at Level 69, and its wider body of water lets a Pal reel in large shadows on top of the smaller ones.
| Structure | Unlock level | Shadow sizes it can catch |
|---|---|---|
| Fishing Pond | 31 | Small, medium |
| Large Fishing Pond | 69 | Small, medium, large |
Beyond the structure itself, you need two things ready. The pond needs bait to run, and it needs a Pal assigned to the work. The Pal must have the Handiwork work suitability, since that is the skill the pond draws on to do the fishing for you.
How to start production at the Fishing Pond
F to open its panel.
Note: keep the pond supplied with bait. Without it, the fishing loop has nothing to cast, the same as when you fish out in the world.
Where caught Pals and items go
When the 15-minute run ends, the results collect in the chest next to the pond. Open that chest to see which Pal was caught and which items were pulled up alongside it. That chest is the single place to confirm a run worked, so if it holds a new Pal and loot, the pond did its job.
The most common reasons a pond returns nothing are simple to rule out. If the run never starts, either no Handiwork Pal is assigned or the pond has run out of bait. Restock the bait and confirm a valid Pal is slotted, then start production again.
Best Handiwork Pals to assign
Any Pal that can do Handiwork will run the pond, but a higher Handiwork level gets the job done faster and more reliably. Anubis sits at the top of the practical picks here with a Handiwork rating of 6. Mid-tier options include Amione and Gloopie, both at level 2, while early-game staples like Cattiva, Depresso, and Croajiro cover the pond at level 1 if that is all you have on hand.
| Pal | Handiwork level |
|---|---|
| Anubis | 6 |
| Amione | 2 |
| Gloopie | 2 |
| Cattiva | 1 |
| Depresso | 1 |
| Croajiro | 1 |
Tip: keep your strongest Handiwork Pal free for the pond rather than tying it up on other stations. A faster worker turns over more runs across the day, which means more caught Pals and more loot in the chest.
Pond fishing versus manual fishing
The pond trades control for convenience. It caps at the shadow sizes its version supports, so a standard pond will never bring in large shadows and you cannot cherry-pick a specific glowing Pal the way you can out in the water. What it does well is volume, quietly stacking catches while you do everything else.
Manual fishing still matters when you want a particular target, since only hands-on casting lets you chase the green, purple, and beam-lit shadows that guarantee special passives or Alpha Pals. Run the pond for steady background gains, and cast by hand when a specific reward is worth the trip. For deeper stat rundowns on any of the Pals above, the wider Palworld database collects each one in full.
