Ever wanted to go fishing but it was the close season, rivers where flooded or lakes frozen? Ever wished you where on the bank but had to stay home and wait for a tradesman to come and fix an appliance or mend a leaky pipe? Have you ever dreamed you could travel further afield and investigate new and exciting worldwide fishing hotspots?
Now you can! Welcome to Fishsim2!!...... So what is Fishsim2? I hear you ask...read on..
Fishsim1 enjoyed a worldwide cult status with related sites as far afield as Australia, literally hundreds of sites dedicated to on or offline matches, new baits, tackle and venues. Also forums where tactics, matches and all manner of things would among other things be discussed. Fishsim2 then has everything in place already to quickly replace its predecessor and make this online / worldwide community grow further with what I believe will be quite staggering proportions.
For years now anglers have been subjected to a long line of "Bass fishing" type games for the computer, whereby you cast and retrieve lures. That’s all fine and dandy if you enjoy lure fishing (as I do), but what if you don’t ?
Fishsim2 embraces all of the UK styles of angling in one game. You can Coarse, game or Seafish in Fishsim2. Choose your tackle, fill your bait boxes, pick a venue and "your there". You can use the Pole or whip, float fish with varying sizes of rod or employ numerous setups/options for the leger, feeder or even the "method”, not to mention using the Fly or Lure of course. Your tackle box is absolutely stuffed with all manner of floats, hooks shot, ledgers, and feeders, mainlines and hook lengths. This allows you to tailor your set-ups to the prevailing conditions, what do I mean here? well fishsim has its own weather pattern also! You can fish a certain peg one day with the wind coming from behind you and so aiding your cast, but the next day it could be in your face and very difficult to cast a float out any real distance. This "real feel" is reciprocated throughout and adds another level to the overall enjoyment of the game. Other examples of this are fish splashing around as you draw them to the net, a ripple effect on the waters surface and the fact that you do not connect with every bite nor do you land every fish.
Before you go fishing you need to "fill" your bait boxes and you can select up to 8 different baits in a limitless supply to take to the bankside with you.
You can also choose the tackle set-up that you would want to use. Choose your rod and reel combo from an extensive list and then put the correct mainline on that suits your needs. The pic below roughly shows that I have opted for e 15 foot float rod and fixed spool reel. Mainline and float have also been chosen, the shotting pattern selected to suit me, I am now just selecting the hook size and type.
Once you have chosen one of the 81venues or 550 plus pegs. Your almost ready to fish! Press "C" on the keyboard and the following option pops up. This allows you to specify your hookbait, size and amount. Which of the 8 baits you would like to use as loosefeed and finally one of the four groundbaits that you have taken with you, but be careful as you can overfeed the fish just like in real life again.
The following two pictures show me floatfishing a river venue from the start of an evening session. From the first trot through to me playing a fish (It was a Chub!). If you examine the bottom left corner of both shots you will see the time and temperature at that moment (you will need to click the pictures to view these properly). It can be seen that as the evening draws on the temperature starts to drop. This is part of the "Realfeel" within Fishsim, and is how it would occur naturally if you where on the bank at that time, for real.
The above "Venue/Peg" is not in the Fishsim2 Game as it comes supplied, I have made this myself. It is not as difficult as it would seem to produce your own venue and then stock it, providing you have a reasonable quality photograph and a tiny bit of knowledge of file formats. All the file writing that you would need to do is in Text document format, the rest is done within the game in the Fishsim2 peg editor. Here you can set the depth and speed of flow add objects such as weedbeds, gravel, or tree roots. Basically your creating a peg as it would be for real.
In the same fashion you can also design and import into the game your own items of tackle (from floats to rods, legers to bite indicators) bait and fish.
With all of this in mind it is possible to go fishing anywhere in the world, at any time and for any species that you wish to catch, and catch them on your own bait/tackle!!
This final picture shows your record for a given species and where about in
the peg it was caught and a few details about the capture.
To fish all of the pegs within Fishsim2 at a standard day ticket price of a fiver a time would cost in the region of £2500.00. Fishsim2 costs just £19.99 plus £1.50 for postage and packing. £21.49 in total for an endless supply of fishing interaction. To purchase Fishsim2, follow the link below to the Fishsim website.
To sum up, this game is a "must" for the avid angler who has access to a pc. This game will go from strength to strength as more and more anglers get their copy and start to create new venues and tackle and so on. When you have your copy you can then join in on this online community and never be stuck for somewhere to fish. Regardless of what the UK weather is doing!!
I must go as the River Lot in the French Pyranese is calling me! There are some very large Carp there that have so far eluded me!
To purchase Fishsim2 and for more information, visit the Fishsim2 site
