Fishing Expansion Mod Progression: From Catch to Cooked Food and Plaques
The Two Recipe Paths
The mod's items split into two processing routes: smelting and crafting. Smelting covers Cooked Catfish and Cooked Gar. Crafting covers the nine standard plaques plus the §oCatfish Plaque. Every other registry entry is either a raw fish or a plaque block, so your progression is simple: catch fish, then either cook them or turn them into displays.
Order of Operations
Start by fishing. Once you have raw catches, decide per fish whether it becomes food or decor.
1. For food, smelt raw Catfish into Cooked Catfish and raw Gar into Cooked Gar in a furnace.
2. For decor, use a crafting table to assemble the matching plaque: Bat fish Plaque, Boomfish Plaque, Catfish Plaque, Flopper Plaque, Gar fish Plaque, Koi fish Plaque, Sea Urchin Plaque, Slurp Plaque, or Stingray Plaque.
3. For the variant, craft the §oCatfish Plaque separately from the standard Catfish Plaque.
Because plaques use shaped recipes, keep your crafting grid organized and follow the pattern exactly. Build a small station with a furnace, a crafting table, and a chest so you can process a full trip's worth of fish without backtracking. Smelt the species you want to eat, and craft plaques for the species you want to show off.