Stardew Valley Trout Derby Guide

With the arrival of patch 1.6, Stardew Valley welcomes the summer season with a trout fishing festival. This new event offers players the opportunity to win impressive rewards by reeling in as many trout as possible. Here are the steps to participate, reasons to attend, and tips for utilizing your catch.

Trout Time: The Trout Derby in Stardew Valley 1.6

The Trout Derby is held every year, rain or shine, on Summer 20 and 21. The festivities are found directly south from your farm, on the river right outside Leah’s house in Cindersap Forest.

Like the SquidFest fishing event, the Trout Derby is an informal affair. It starts at 6 AM and ends at 2 AM, during which time you can enter or leave the area at your leisure. During the Derby, all villagers except Willy stick to their typical schedules, your farm animals still need to be taken care of, and all shops in Pelican Town stay open.

The name of the game in the Trout Derby is to catch Rainbow Trout from the river in Cindersap Forest, which can be caught at any time of day and in any type of weather during the event. Any time you successfully hook a Trout, there’s a solid but not guaranteed chance that you’ll also receive a Golden Tag (below). This takes up an inventory slot.

As an experiment, I caught 10 Rainbow Trout and got 6 Golden Tags. The Tags can also appear in any fishing treasures that come along with a Trout.

Your Tags can be redeemed one at a time at the nearby Derby vendor in exchange for prizes. The first seems to always be a Tent Kit, a consumable item that lets you spend the night outdoors. This may not sound like much, but it's useful when you're dungeon-diving.

After that, the Trout Derby prizes are random, but can include:

• Bucket Hat apparel
• Crab Pot
• 3 Mystery Boxes
• Diamond
• Mounted Trout wall decoration
• 20 Deluxe Bait
• 2 Triple Shot Espresso
• Quality Sprinkler
• Warp Totem: Farm
• 3 Omni Geodes

That’s really all there is to it. There’s no particular competitive element to the Derby. Instead, it seems to be structured as a useful giveaway for players who are at the start of a new game. The shot at a free Quality Sprinkler is a solid upgrade by itself.

Rainbow Trout aren’t the hardest fish to catch, but if you want to maximize your time-to-trout ratio, try to get to Fishing level 6 as fast as you can to unlock the Bait Maker. This is reasonably easy to make, requiring 3 Iron Bars, 3 Coral, and 1 Sea Urchin, although the latter 2 ingredients require you to fix the broken bridge on the Beach first.

The Bait Maker can turn any fish into a type of Bait that raises the chances that you’ll catch that specific fish. If you can catch 1 Rainbow Trout without it, throw that Trout into the Bait Maker to create Rainbow Trout Bait. With that equipped, you’ll get a Trout on your line maybe 6 times in 10. (Please ignore my messy kitchen.)

What Do I Do with All This Trout?

As with SquidFest, the Trout Derby doesn’t require you to turn in the Trout at all. While you may end up turning a lot of the Trout into Trout Bait over the course of the festival, you’re likely to have a few left over. Before you sell it all, here’s what you can do with it.

Trout Facts

• Season: Summer
• Base Sale Price Per Unit: 65g
• Base Energy/Health When Eaten: 25 Energy/11 Health

Trout can be used in any recipe that simply requires a fish, such as Sashimi or Quality Fertilizer. The only recipe that specifically requires a Rainbow Trout is Trout Soup, naturally, which you can learn how to make from the Queen of Sauce TV show on Fall 14. Make sure to save 1 Trout for Soup if you’re trying to get the Gourmet Chef achievement.

Beyond that, the big-brain play with Rainbow Trout is to throw a few of them into a fish pond on your farm. Robin can construct these for you for 5,000g, 200 Stone, 5 Seaweed, and 5 Green Algae.

Once you add a Trout to a fish pond, it gradually reproduces over time and will eventually ask you to give it a random item. Giving it what it wants will expand the fish pond’s population cap, up to a maximum of 10. Once the fish pond is maxed out with 10 Rainbow Trout, it may reward you every day with items that include Salmon Roe, Rainbow Shells, and Prismatic Shards. While the chance that a Trout Pond will cough up a Shard is well below 1%, it’s still a passive chance every day to get one of the rarest and most useful items in the game.

That’s just about all you need to know about the Trout Derby. It’s not as challenging as SquidFest, but it’s a good excuse to grab your fishing pole every Summer. The rewards are worthwhile, the fish are biting, and it’s right outside your house. There’s no reason not to attend.