If you encounter a pokémon every time you use the fishing rod at the same spot, you increase your odds of finding a shiny.
What is Chain Fishing?
Chain fishing increases your chance of finding a shiny pokémon. A chain occurs when you encounter a wild pokémon every consecutive time you use the fishing rod while standing in the same spot. Each consecutive time this happens, your chance of encountering a shiny pokémon increases.
It does not need to be the same pokémon each time. You can run away or KO or capture the wild pokémon without breaking the chain.
Things That Can Break the Chain
The following things can break the chain while chain fishing:
- Moving. To chain fish, you need to stay in the same spot each time you cast the fishing rod.
- Not getting a bite. When you get the message "nothing seems to be biting", the chain has been broken.
- Pulling up the fishing rod too early. If you pull up the fishing rod before getting a bite, you break the chain.
- Pulling up the fishing rod too late. If you get a bite, but don't pull it up in time, the game will tell you that you were too slow and the pokémon got away. If this happens, the chain has been broken.
Use Suction Cups or Sticky Hold
To improve your chances of chain fishing success, put a pokémon that has the Suction Cups ability or the Sticky Hold ability in the first slot of your party. This increases your chance of getting a bite from a wild pokémon while fishing.
Fish in an Enclosed Area
The guy who gives you the Super Rod in Mélancolie Path will give you a hint about chain fishing if you beat his record of 7 consecutive fishing encounters. He says that you should fish in places surrounded by rocks, or in a corner. The more enclosed a fishing area is, the more likely you are to encounter many consecutive pokémon while fishing. A good example of such a location is in the area south of the Muraille Coast beach, which is part of Ambrette Town. There are some rocks at the south end of the path that surround a patch of water on three sides. You can fish in that patch of water by surfing there and using your fishing rod. You are more likely to have consecutive encounters when using your fishing rod in that spot because that spot is enclosed on three sides.
More Information
Changing weather conditions may break the chain. For example, I had a chain of 50 that ended with the "nothing seems to be biting" message after it started raining.
If you have a pokémon that knows Synchronize, you can use it to increase the odds that the shiny pokémon that you encounter has the same Nature as the Synchronize pokémon. However, you have to put the Synchronize pokémon in the first spot of the party, which means you can't use a Suction Cups or Sticky Hold pokémon in the first slot to increase your chance of finding consecutive wild pokémon while fishing.
Chain fishing is not a guarantee of finding a shiny, but your odds of finding a shiny will become much higher than usual.