Does slang in the domain name affect google?

I'm working on a website, lets call it fishb8.com (that's not its name). Suppose it markets a brand of fish bait and I'm trying to sell it to people Googling. I've heard that keywords in domain names are a relatively big factor on rankings (according to a Moz report I read a while ago).

Will Google "sound it out" and consider "bait" to be a keyword of fishb8.com?

Would it be any different if I bought fishbait.com and did a 301 redirect to fishb8.com? Would I need to do link building on both fishbait.com and fishb8.com?

Will it simply not matter if the rest of the link building, etc. is good?

I'm rather concerned that the domain I'm working on might simply be considered gibberish by Google and it won't understand that a name like fishb8.com is about fish bait.

the keywords in domain name are important in the moment of your startup if you want to be indexed fast. but after, let s say, 1 year is not such important. the most important thing is the content of the website.

In that case you will only need to do link building in fishbait.com to get traffic to your original sites.
better you copy all your website on fishbait.com after deindexing the original site and make fishbait your primary website!