How to catch exotic aberrant fish in Dredge

Dredge is a fishing game with a cosmic horror twist lurking around every corner. You can’t escape the feeling that something isn’t right in this world, and that’s not helped by the strange fish you can catch. This guide explains how to catch exotic aberrant fish so you can get on with completing Pursuits, making money, and watching what happens to those who eat them.

Related: Dredge is a dark, addictive fishing adventure that’s filled with sumptuous cosmic horror – Review

Where to catch exotic aberrant fish

There are a couple of ways to catch exotic aberrant fish in Dredge. We’ve outlined all of these below, so read through them to find the one that works for you. Note that some of these methods require you to hit certain progression milestones.

How to catch exotic aberrant fish in disturbed water

The method for catching exotic aberrant fish you’ll use most frequently is fishing. All fishing spots of disturbed water have a chance of netting you an exotic aberrant fish. However, some have light glowing above them. If you fish at these, you’ll have a better chance of catching an exotic aberrant fish. When you’re trying to catch as many exotic aberrant fish as possible, look for these glowing fishing spots, and you’ll get the best results.

How to catch exotic aberrant fish with the Atrophy ability

Once you’ve found the Necklace Relic and have returned it to The Collector as part of Dredge’s main quest, you’ll be given the Atrophy ability. This is an awesome power that you can use at any point in your travels to cause all the nearby fish to ascend to the surface and float around you. From there, you can take your pick of those fish, many of which could be exotic aberrant variants. We found that this ability works best over glowing fishing spots, but it does produce exotic aberrant fish pretty much everywhere.

A word of caution when using the Atrophy ability. Once you’ve used it, your sanity will plummet and put you in danger of being attacked by all sorts of cosmic horrors. Try to use Atrophy close to a dock so you don’t get caught out in the open with low sanity.

Dredge’s exotic aberrant fish explained

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Spoilers for one of the game’s endings lie ahead. Exotic aberrant fish are creatures that have been touched by the cosmic madness infecting Dredge’s seas. There’s something not quite right in this region of the world, and it affects the fish because they’re the closes to it. The water is strange, resulting in strange fish, which then causes many of the local people to be even stranger. Almost mad. If you return all the Relics to The Collector and take him out to sea to use them, you’ll see the kinds of creatures that lurk at the bottom of the sea.