First fish in the fish pond

Common SV farmer

Farmhand
Hello.

Before my last playthrough of Stardew Valley I always put a sturgeon in my first fish pond . And build it usually in the middle of the Fall . But last time I build fish pond in the late Spring and put there a ... Sea urchin . Why this ,, fish " ? Because : It not require any quest ; Not produse any trash ; Produce one or five roe ; Aged roe good as food (before first house upgrade), sells for decent money early in the game , and aged roe is a very good gift , which liked by everyone except Jas , Vincent and Sebastian (alas , they hate it) . So , I see only pluses and recommend do as I to every player who build a fish pond early .
 
Giant Octopodes

Giant Octopodes

Farmer
Sound and practical advice! Thanks for the post! Personally I build Fish Ponds for the fancy colored water effects I can get first and foremost, so I'm unlikely to follow it XD Other than the ones with water effects, here are a few other standout options:

Sea Cucumbers are useful for making Lucky Lunches
imnvs would advocate likely for Flounder, Midnight Carp, and Squid or Midnight Squid, for easy access to the materials to make Seafoam Pudding on demand
Tiger Trout also offer an initial capacity of 10 and only Roe, but give 1-2 Roe 95% of the time, instead of 1-5 Roe 50% of the time, at max capacity. Which is statistically about even, a bit more consistent but a marginally lower average, regardless what seems to be a fine alternative.
Octopus offers a relatively high value item a relatively high percentage of the time. While there are some fish that offer certain very valuable items 2% of the time or less, Octopodes offer 1-10 Omni Geodes 17% of the time, or more than once a week. Plus they're fun, who doesn't like Octopodes XD

Certainly your option seems good and sound, just wanted to toss out some other fun options as well.
 
imnvs

imnvs

Local Legend
I certainly would recommend the fish ponds recommended by @Giant Octopodes in normal circumstances...

The idea here, though, is for something super easy, no quests, just to get the aged roe needed? I can support this plan for ease of reaching certain goals.

I'd also recommend emptying it once those goals are met, followed by replacing it with something more useful in the long term.

Oh, and while on the topic, I also recommend putting signs on your fish ponds. For those ponds that aren't instantly recognizable by color of the water, when you put a sign on a fish pond it is automatically updated with a picture of the fish in the pond along with the count of that fish in that pond. This is super useful for ponds you intend to harvest fish from more than you are looking for their roe. (This applies to the flounder and midnight carp ponds mentioned, as I recommend those as an easy way to get seafoam pudding. The squid or midnight squid, and I recommend midnight over regular squids, are for the squid ink, but you don't need a sign because you don't fish out the squid.)
 

Elenna101

Farmer
Seems like a fun idea if you want aged roe early without too much work.

@Giant Octopodes I'm curious, what are you doing with the omni geodes? After getting all the minerals I'm pretty much always too lazy to open them, so they're pretty worthless to me.
I agree with all of Giant Octopodes' other recommendations though.
IIRC someone did math at some point and concluded that lava eel and blobfish are the best for money? Although I think that was in 1.4 so I don't know how the new 1.5 fish change it. (Also, lava eels give red water which is fun.)

I always put signs on my fish ponds just because they look nice, convenience aside :)
 
Worblehat

Worblehat

Planter
Elenna101 said:
lava eel and blobfish are the best for money? Although I think that was in 1.4 so I don't know how the new 1.5 fish change it.
Click to expand...
No change. Aged roe value is linear with the base value of the fish. Lava eel is significantly more valuable than any other fish, so aged lava eel roe are the most valuable; ice pip and blobfish are tied for second place.

But none of those are particularly relevant to the OP's strategy of starting a fish pond very early in the game. (If you're good enough to catch a lava eel or ice pip in Spring Year 1 and put it in a pond, you don't really need the help... 😛 ).
 
Giant Octopodes

Giant Octopodes

Farmer
Yep those things plus trading for warp totems to the desert when relevant, or even trading them for hay if nothing else. I've probably traded a good 1000 to 1500 omni geodes to the desert trader on the save file I have with my wife.

In regards to the OP's strategy though, if it's spring-summer of year 1 and your goal is to get cranking on Roe production ASAP, then fully agreed, lava eels and octopodes are unlikely to be relevant, and if they are, you're probably doing just fine already. Throwing 9 Sea Urchins in there (or however many you have handy) and collecting the up to 2 Roe per day on average right away seems like a fine plan, for all the reasons the OP stated.
 

LoveElliotsHair

Sodbuster
I also put midnight carp into one of the ponds because the fishing time for them is so limited and it's an ingredient for seafoam pudding. I generally really need that high fishing buff to catch the harder fish. Squid for ink and to fulfill Pierre's loved gift requirement (another reason I dislike this character! Seriously, calamari??) . Flounder is easy to catch so I don't worry about that one.

But once I've caught all the fish, it's easy to empty and put something pretty in it. I love the color from the slimejack.
 
Boo1972

Boo1972

Farmer
Sea urchin is a fantastic idea for an early game fish pond, especially if you get the fish farmer bundle. Thanks!

I always have an octopus pond. Can’t bear the thought of those intelligent creatures being someone’s (imaginary) lunch. Every octopus I catch goes into a pond or an aquarium.
 
Lew Zealand

Lew Zealand

Helper
My first target for Ponds is Seafoam Pudding to Fish up the 8 tough Fish, so in goes a Squid as I usually find the time to Fish up enough Midnight Carp in Fall when I have some time after 10pm. Flounder are also common enough that I have a dozen or so by Summer's end and that's about as many as are needed.

After then it's usually Sturgeon for Caviar and all the Pond colors because why not? Those also happen to have decent item production but it all ends up being too much work in the long run to remove the Ponds, so they finally get sent to a corner of the Farm to think about what they did wrong.
 
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Elenna101

Farmer
imnvs said:
It takes 333 omni geodes to buy a magic cowboy hat or magic turban. It costs 5 omni geodes to buy 1 artifact trove. There's lots you can do with omni geodes besides just break them open.
Click to expand...
True, yeah. I guess I was thinking of my main farm where I already have all those things and a desert obelisk, but that's pretty seperate from OP's discussion.
 

Breech Loader

Tiller
The Sturgeon. For Caviar. I'm gonna swap it out in time to get actual Roe... but that will be after I've popped Caviar into the necessery bundle.
 
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