Island 5 has no grill, but the volcano’s flowing lava streams double as a cooking station — hold your catch over the lava to lock in the maximum 1.5x value, then sell it to the camp merchant for a big profit boost.
Volcano Island is the fifth and final island in How to Fish, and it’s home to the strongest money-making loop in the game. A big part of that is cooking — a cooked fish is worth far more than a raw one — but the volcano throws players a curveball on that front the moment they land.
The lava is your cooking station on Volcano Island
Step onto Island 5 and you’ll notice there’s no grill or cooking station anywhere on the beach. It looks like cooking simply isn’t an option here. It is — you just cook differently on the volcano. The lava streams running across the island work as a cooking surface: hold a fish in the flowing lava and it cooks exactly the way it would on a grill.
Key Since cooking is one of the single biggest ways to raise what a fish sells for, this is not a step to skip on the volcano. Skipping it leaves a real chunk of coins on the table with every sale.
How to cook a fish in the lava on Volcano Island in How to Fish
The whole loop takes under a minute: catch a fish, cook it in the lava, and sell it for far more than it was worth raw.
STEP 1/5
Catch a Volcano fish
Cast out on Island 5 and reel in a high-value catch such as the Blobfish.
STEP 2/5
Kill it and pick it up
Shoot the fish until it can be collected, then grab it — raw, this Blobfish reads a value of 2,244.
STEP 3/5
Hold it over the lava
Carry the fish into a flowing lava stream and hold it there until it turns a golden-brown, cooked color.
STEP 4/5
Pick the cooked fish back up
Lift it out and inspect it: it now shows a Cooking: 1.5x multiplier and a value of 3,366.
STEP 5/5
Sell it to the camp merchant
Take the cooked fish to the vendor at the shore camp and sell it for the boosted price.
Video help
Lava cooking beats the Island 3 grill
| Cooking method | Max value multiplier | Burn / timing risk |
|---|---|---|
| Volcano lava | 1.5x | None — settles at the max and holds |
| Island 3 grill | 1.5x | High — overcook it and the value burns to zero |
The lava isn’t handing you a bigger multiplier than the grill — both top out at the same value. What it hands you is a safer one. The grill you unlock back on Island 3 only holds its maximum for a moment: leave the catch on the heat a beat too long and its value starts falling, and if it goes fully black it’s worth nothing at all. The lava has no such window. Drop a fish in and it settles at the maximum and stays there, so there’s nothing to time and nothing to burn. If you want to watch it happen, inspect the fish with F while it cooks to see the multiplier climb.
Make more money with the Scientific Lure and better inventory
The lava is only half of the money loop; the other half is catching fish that are actually worth cooking. The Scientific Lure is the key purchase on the volcano — it unlocks the island’s highest-tier regular catches: the Blobfish, Oarfish, Anglerfish, Stonefish and Superdwarf Fish. These are the most valuable everyday creatures in the game, so each one you lava-cook and sell is worth far more than anything you were pulling in on the earlier islands. It runs around $500, though that price predates the latest updates and may have shifted since.
One catch behaves differently. The Superdwarf Fish is too small to land big trick shots like 360 spins on, so don’t waste time trying to style on it — just catch it normally and lava-cook it like the rest.
Land your trick shots before you drop the fish in the lava — Killscore and the cooking multiplier stack, so a high-Killscore catch cooked to the max sells for far more than either bonus would earn on its own.
Related How to Fish guides
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you cook weapons and other items in the lava, or only fish?
You can cook far more than fish. Weapons and other sellable items take the same boost of up to 1.5x before you sell them, so an outdated gun is worth barbecuing rather than dumping at the shop as-is. If you accidentally cook a weapon or tool you still want to use, you can clean it off by dipping it in water.
Where do you first unlock cooking before you reach the volcano?
Cooking first opens up on Island 3, the desert island, well before the volcano. Once you’ve dealt with the shark for the Grillmaster and finished his request, he hands you a lighter, and from then on you can use the grill to cook anything you catch. The volcano’s lava later does the same job without the timing and burn risk.
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