How to Fix How to Fish (Dazed Games) Low FPS, Stuttering, and Lag

If there is one thing that can ruin a game like How to Fish, it is not missing the perfect catch. It is watching your FPS collapse the moment three friends, a boat, a pile of physics objects, and half the ocean decide to exist on screen at the same time.

That is exactly why performance matters so much in How to Fish. Dazed Games has built a multiplayer fishing experience around physics, chaotic interactions, boats, weapons, objects, and plenty of things happening simultaneously. When everything runs properly, that chaos is part of the fun. When frame pacing starts falling apart, however, the game can suddenly feel less like a relaxing fishing trip and more like your PC is fighting for its life.

I have always found these kinds of games particularly sensitive to stuttering. A game can report 80 or 100 FPS and still feel terrible if the frame delivery is inconsistent. In How to Fish, that problem becomes even more noticeable when you’re moving around the map, entering a new area, throwing objects, fighting alongside teammates, or triggering a lot of physics interactions.

The good news is that there are several things worth trying before blaming your GPU or deciding that the game simply runs badly on your machine. Here is how I would approach How to Fish low FPS, stuttering, and lag problems on PC in 2026.

First, Figure Out What Kind of Performance Problem You Have

Before changing ten Windows settings at once, spend a few minutes figuring out what is actually going wrong.

Not every performance problem is caused by the same thing. A useful distinction is:

This distinction is important because network lag cannot be fixed by simply lowering texture quality, and shader stuttering is not necessarily a sign that your graphics card is too weak.

Personally, I would start with the simplest fixes first and only move into more aggressive Windows changes if the problem remains.

1. Try a 60 FPS Cap Before Doing Anything Complicated

This is probably the first thing I would test on a high-refresh-rate monitor.

If you are running a 144Hz, 165Hz, or 240Hz display, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. In fact, higher refresh rates are great for most games. But if How to Fish is struggling with inconsistent frame pacing, a stable 60 FPS can sometimes feel significantly better than an unstable 90–120 FPS.

The important word here is stable.

Try setting the game’s frame rate to 60 FPS if the option is available. If the game does not provide a useful limiter, you can use your GPU control software or a frame limiter such as RTSS.

If your experience suddenly becomes smoother, even though the FPS number is lower, that is a strong indication that frame pacing was part of the problem.

You Can Also Test 60Hz Temporarily

As a diagnostic step, Windows allows you to change your display refresh rate.

Go to:

Settings → System → Display → Advanced Display

Find the refresh-rate option and temporarily select 60Hz.

Launch the game again and see whether the stuttering changes.

I would not necessarily leave your entire desktop at 60Hz permanently. If you paid for a 144Hz or 165Hz monitor, you obviously want to use it. The point is to determine whether the game’s rendering behavior improves when the display and frame rate are synchronized around 60 FPS.

2. Don’t Ignore Shader Compilation Stutter

Shader compilation is one of those PC gaming problems that can be incredibly frustrating because it often looks like random lag.

You can be sitting at a perfectly healthy FPS, move into a new location, trigger a visual effect, or encounter a new combination of objects, and suddenly the game freezes for a fraction of a second.

Then everything goes back to normal.

If that sounds familiar, shaders may be involved.

Modern games frequently compile or load shaders as new visual effects are encountered. Multiplayer physics-heavy games can make this especially noticeable because you are not always seeing the same combinations of effects and objects during every session.

NVIDIA Users

Open the NVIDIA Control Panel and check:

Manage 3D Settings → Shader Cache Size

If your driver exposes this setting, you can experiment with a larger cache allocation rather than leaving it at a restrictive value.

I would personally avoid blindly selecting the largest possible number just because it is available. More cache is not automatically better for every system. If you have plenty of storage space and are dealing with repeated shader-related hitching, however, increasing the cache is a reasonable experiment.

AMD Users

AMD Radeon users can use AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition to clear the shader cache.

The exact menu wording can change between driver versions, but look through the graphics or gaming settings for the shader-cache reset option.

After clearing the cache, the first few minutes of gameplay may actually feel worse because shaders have to be rebuilt. That does not necessarily mean the fix failed.

3. Lower the Settings That Actually Affect Performance

One mistake I see constantly in PC gaming guides is telling people to turn every graphics option to Low.

I don’t like that approach.

If you’re playing a game with a distinctive visual style, there is no reason to make it look terrible just to gain a few frames. Instead, target the settings that have the biggest performance impact.

For How to Fish, I would start experimenting with:

• Shadows: Medium or Low
• Effects: Medium
• Post Processing: Medium or Low
• View Distance: Medium/High
• Textures: High if your GPU has sufficient VRAM
• Resolution: Native resolution first
• Motion Blur: Off if you prefer a cleaner image

The biggest difference will depend on your hardware and the game’s current optimization, so there is no universal magic preset.

If GPU usage is constantly close to 100%, reducing graphics settings can help. If GPU usage is relatively low while the FPS is still collapsing during huge physics interactions, the problem may be more CPU-related.

4. Be Careful With Steam Launch Options

There are plenty of PC performance guides that recommend throwing a giant list of launch commands into Steam.

I would not do that.

Commands such as -high and memory-related parameters are often presented as universal performance fixes, but they are not magic switches. In some games they can do very little, and in certain situations they can even introduce instability.

If you want to experiment with a launch option, change one thing at a time and benchmark the result.

To access launch options:

Steam → Library → How to Fish → Properties → General → Launch Options

The important part is keeping track of what you changed. If you add five commands and performance gets worse, you have no idea which one caused it.

For most players, I would prioritize in-game settings, drivers, frame limiting, and background applications before relying on undocumented or poorly understood launch parameters.

5. Restart Your Graphics Driver When Performance Suddenly Breaks

This is a surprisingly useful Windows trick.

If the game suddenly starts behaving strangely after switching applications, changing resolutions, or recovering from a display issue, you can restart the graphics driver without rebooting the entire PC.

Press:

Windows + Ctrl + Shift + B

Your screen may briefly flicker or go black for a moment.

Windows will restart the graphics driver, and you should hear or see a small indication that the display stack has refreshed.

This isn’t a permanent fix for poor optimization, but it is an excellent troubleshooting step when a game suddenly develops bizarre graphical behavior or performance problems during a session.

You can also use Device Manager to disable and re-enable your graphics adapter, but I would consider that a secondary option. There is no reason to regularly cycle your GPU through Device Manager if everything is already working correctly.

6. Put Windows in a Performance-Friendly Power Mode

Windows can make sensible power-saving decisions that are not always ideal when you’re trying to squeeze consistent performance out of a gaming PC.

Open:

Settings → System → Power & battery

Look for the power mode setting and choose a performance-oriented option when appropriate.

Desktop users with powerful hardware generally have less reason to aggressively prioritize energy savings during gaming sessions. Laptop users should be more careful, because maximum performance can dramatically increase heat, fan noise, and battery consumption.

I would also avoid downloading random third-party “PC optimizer” programs that promise to unlock 500% more performance. Most of them are unnecessary, and some create more problems than they solve.

7. Test Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling

Windows also provides Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, commonly abbreviated as HAGS.

You can find it through:

Settings → System → Display → Graphics → Default graphics settings

If the option is available on your system, test it rather than assuming it must be enabled or disabled.

This is important because Windows features like HAGS can behave differently depending on the GPU, driver version, game engine, and overall system configuration.

If enabling it makes How to Fish smoother, keep it enabled. If it introduces more stuttering, switch it back and compare.

There is nothing wrong with treating PC optimization as an experiment.

8. Disable Overlays You Don’t Actually Need

Overlays are convenient, but every additional layer of software running over a game creates another potential source of conflict.

For troubleshooting, I recommend temporarily disabling:

• Steam Overlay
• Discord Overlay
• Xbox Game Bar
• GPU recording overlays
• Third-party FPS monitoring overlays

You do not necessarily have to live without them forever.

The idea is to create a clean test environment. If How to Fish suddenly becomes smoother after disabling Discord or another overlay, you have found a useful clue.

I especially recommend checking recording software. Background video capture, instant replay, browser acceleration, and hardware monitoring can occasionally produce unusual frame-time spikes.

9. Watch Your CPU and GPU Temperatures

Don’t forget the obvious stuff.

If your PC runs How to Fish beautifully for ten minutes and then gradually becomes slower, overheating is worth investigating.

Use a monitoring application to watch:

CPU temperature, GPU temperature, GPU utilization, CPU utilization, VRAM usage, RAM usage, and frame time.

Frame time is particularly useful. A stable frame time generally feels smoother than a wildly fluctuating one, even when the average FPS number looks impressive.

If temperatures are climbing and clock speeds are dropping, you may be dealing with thermal throttling rather than a game-specific optimization problem.

Clean dust from the system, check airflow, make sure laptop vents are unobstructed, and verify that your fans are behaving normally.

10. Update Drivers, But Don’t Assume Every New Driver Is Better

Graphics drivers are worth checking whenever a newly released game has performance problems.

For NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel GPUs, install the latest driver available for your hardware and restart the PC afterward.

However, I would not blindly assume that every driver release improves every game.

If How to Fish starts stuttering immediately after a driver update, compare your experience against the previous version. Sometimes a clean driver installation can help, while in other cases a particular driver release may simply not agree with a specific game.

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My Recommended Order of Fixes

If you don’t want to spend an entire evening changing Windows settings, this is the order I would personally follow:

1. Restart the game and PC.
2. Check GPU and CPU temperatures.
3. Cap the game at 60 FPS and test frame pacing.
4. Temporarily test a 60Hz display refresh rate.
5. Lower shadows, effects, and post-processing.
6. Clear or expand the GPU shader cache.
7. Disable Steam, Discord, Xbox, and recording overlays.
8. Update or clean-install your graphics driver.
9. Test Windows power and HAGS settings.
10. Investigate whether the problem is actually multiplayer/network-related.

That last point is important.

If your own character moves smoothly but other players, boats, or physics objects suddenly teleport, freeze, or snap around, you may not be dealing with an FPS problem at all. Network latency, packet loss, server performance, or multiplayer synchronization can create symptoms that look remarkably similar to graphical stuttering.

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Final Thoughts

I actually like the fact that How to Fish is the kind of game where something ridiculous can happen at any moment. The physics, cooperative chaos, boats, weapons, and fishing mechanics are what make it memorable. Unfortunately, those same systems can make performance problems much more obvious.

The goal shouldn’t be to blindly chase the highest FPS number. Consistent frame pacing is more important than a flashy FPS counter.

If your game is sitting at 90 FPS but constantly jumps between smooth frames and massive frame-time spikes, I’d much rather play at a locked 60 FPS that feels consistent. Start there, then work upward.

For most players, the best combination will be relatively simple: use a sensible FPS cap, keep demanding graphics settings under control, give shader caching a chance to rebuild, disable unnecessary overlays, maintain current GPU drivers, and make sure your hardware isn’t throttling.

And if none of that fixes the problem, don’t immediately assume your PC is the culprit. New multiplayer games can have genuine optimization and synchronization issues that only the developers can fully resolve. In that situation, checking recent patches, Steam discussions, and developer announcements is often more useful than endlessly changing Windows registry settings.

The nice thing about troubleshooting How to Fish low FPS, stuttering, and lag is that you can approach it methodically. Change one thing, test the game, check your frame time, and keep the setting if it actually helps. That’s much better than applying twenty “FPS boost” tweaks from a random optimization video and hoping for the best.