Fishing

Fishing is a secondary profession. It allows adventurers to fish various objects, primarily fish and other waterbound creatures, from water, lava and even liquid mercury. Many of these fish can be consumed immediately for a quantity of health restored, and can also be fed to hunter pets. However, the true value of this scaly bounty comes when combined with the profession of Cooking; fish can be prepared and combined into innumerable different recipes, providing far greater restorative benefits, as well as a menagerie of potential stat buffs. Other, rarer fish are used in Alchemy recipes or provide stranger benefits, such as transformation into different appearances and even the summoning of rare mobs. In addition, those who choose to fish may find unfortunate sea creatures who swallowed gems, as well as items (including wieldable fish such as Old Crafty and Old Ironjaw, and even the previously powerful ) and mounts (Great Sea Ray (mount)). Many of these can be sold on the Auction House.

This profession is one of the most underappreciated, in part due to the time commitment required; however, those who choose to explore the potential bounties of the seas and rivers of Azeroth and beyond will find many benefits. There is a small army of questgivers and vendors linked to fishing, allowing access to a variety of mounts, toys and other perks-- there is even an entire faction in Pandaria dedicated to fishing, led by the most famous angler of all, Nat Pagle.

Although fishing previously required an aspiring angler to equip one of the many types of fishing poles found throughout the worlds, recent developments have allowed them to fish by simply receiving the appropriate training (which varies on an expansion-by-expansion basis) and clicking the button. Many choose to put the ability on their hotbar for easier recasting.

• ''Fishers relax and feed themselves by catching the bounty of Azeroth's lakes and seas. Careful bait selection and patience can result in some truly rewarding hauls, from seafaring delicacies that restore heroes' health or enhance their attributes to waterlogged flotsam like cases and trunks. Fishing can even yield rare reagents and items lost at the bottom of the ocean or swallowed up by sea creatures!

• ''Fishing is a secondary profession - anyone can learn to fish, no matter how many other professions they've devoted themselves to.

• ''All fishing must be done in a body of water with a fishing rod, which can be purchased from any fishing trainer. Fishing in different locations (or, optionally, with different types of bait, also bought from trainers) may produce different results.

• Though most of your catches will be valuable the moment you haul them out of the water, cooking is a convenient way to get even more mileage out of the fish that you catch - when they're specially prepared, many fish offer additional restorative benefits.

• [[File:Pointer fishinghook on 32x32.png]] will appear on your bobber

In its simplest form, fishing only requires the Fishing skill, taught by fishing trainers. If one is just starting fishing, a fishing pole can be optional, sold by a general trade goods or fishing supplies vendors. Fishing trainers and fishing supply vendors are often in the vicinity of fishable waters. When fishing without a pole, your character will make do with a reasonably straight branch with the end whittled smooth and a string tied to it. Once your fishing skill or level is high enough to benefit from fishing poles that increase your fishing skill, that would be a good time to acquire one. When fishing with a pole, consider using a fishing lure, available from vendors that sell fishing supplies.

After procuring the fishing skill, and if you like, a fishing pole, find a body of water; a pond, a lake, a river, a section of coast, a dock or pier, a moat, or something similar. To be fishable, a body of water has to be sufficiently deep - if it is not, you will get a warning that the water is not sufficiently deep and will be unable to fish at that location. Most bodies of water in Azeroth are deep enough, but some minor pools are not. The small ponds in the Valley of Trials in Durotar do not support fishing, for example. If a fishing trainer is standing nearby, you can be sure the water is deep enough. If you are in a river and get the message, try moving up or downstream. If in a lake, try moving a bit into the lake.

Also, you can stand, sit, or even lie down while fishing. The Fishing Chair is unnecessary, but a nice touch. You can be on land or in the water and fish, but you can not be swimming. This will, of course, vary with the character's race, as shorter races cannot stand in deeper water as a taller race. A class with an ability to travel on water will also have an advantage.

While facing the water, equip the fishing pole, and/or use your Fishing skill (found in the professions tab of your spellbook) to cast the fishing line. Your character will cast the fishing line in the direction he is facing, with minor random deviations in length and angle of the cast. If you miss the body of water ("Your cast did not land in fishable water"), you may wish to adjust the direction your character is facing and/or simply cast Fishing again.

Fishing is like channeling a spell, counting down from 21 seconds to 0 seconds. A fishing bobber will appear somewhere in the water in front of you, and you'll notice that your character will start channeling the Fishing spell. Move your cursor over the bobber and it will turn into the standard interaction cursor. Wait for your bobber to splash, then click it (within 3–4 seconds) to draw the fishing line in. Depending on the area you're fishing and your fishing skill, you may either catch something useful, or you will catch a junk item like Driftwood. You can then repeat the whole process by using the Fishing skill again.

The items you can fish up depend on the region you are in; the different sub-zones within any given region will usually yield the same fish. There are a few exceptions to this: for example bodies of fresh water (lakes or streams) will yield different fish from seawater. Schools of fish also have their own distinct contents. Some locations have distinctive items that you might occasionally fish up. In addition, if your skill level is too low for an area you will receive junk items rather than fish (see Fishing level requirements below). These junk items are the same for different regions; you will catch the same junk in Feralas that you caught behind Lion's Pride Inn in Goldshire when your skill is too low.

You can move your character so that they are mostly submerged in the water (but not swimming) and angled so that no casts will go onto land or shallow water. If you are having trouble seeing the bobber bob when a fish is on your line, you may want to zoom in so you are looking in 1st person. If you are fishing alone, you can hear your bobber splash; in a group, all of the bobbers sound the same.

Fishing pools are objects found in bodies of water and other liquids (lava, most notably) throughout the many zones of Azeroth and beyond. These pools can be roughly divided into two subcategories:

• Schools of Fish, which guarantee that a small number (around five in most cases) of the type of fish mentioned in the pool's name can be caught there. There is some variance depending on the size of these schools; larger ones found during Pandaren Fish of the Day events can host up to fifty, while others for certain world quests may host only a single fish.
• Floating debris, which typically holds small chests containing a variety of crafting and trash items. These are less common than schools of fish, and catching something from a variety of different types is required for The Scavenger achievement.

Both of these can be located on the map with the Find Fish ability, which is learned from the Weather-Beaten Journal. Similarly, both will also respawn as appropriate to the circumstance, similar to mining nodes.

Schools of fish may not respawn if the event associated to them, such as the Pandaren Fish of the Day or the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza, ends before they can do so. Existing pools will also despawn at this time.

Some fish may only be caught during specific times of day or season. Nocturnal fish can be caught from 6 PM to 12 AM (18:00 - 0:00), diurnal fish from 6 AM to 12 PM (6:00 - 12:00), which is based on the server's time.

Other fish such as Stonescale Eel and Plated Armorfish have been rumored to only appear during certain times of the day - however, all of these can be caught 24 hours a day.

It is known that Winter Squid and Raw Summer Bass appear during their respective seasons. During Autumn and Spring, they can both apparently be caught, although the frequency of each might scale throughout the season.

The servertime is cut up into several cycles, not just Day/Night:

• 0000 to 0600 (midnight to 6 AM) 100% Night
• 0600 to 1200 (6 AM to noon) 50/50 (*1)
• 1200 to 1800 (noon to 6 PM) 100% Day
• 1800 to 0000 (6 PM to midnight) 50/50 (*2)

• (*1) in earlier hours this will lean more toward Sunscale and later hours more toward Nightfin
• (*2) the opposite of (*1)

The mechanics of fishing skill levels were changed significantly in patch 3.1. Prior to 3.1, each zone had a minimum skill requirement to be able to cast in that zone and a cap where you achieved a 100% catch rate in that zone. In between there was a chance your fish could "get away"; you would catch nothing and receive no skill-up for that cast. As of 3.1, there is no longer a minimum skill requirement to fish in any zone, and all casts will catch something and award a chance for a skill-up. However, if your skill level is too low for a zone, you will catch mostly vendor trash items. The skill level required to guarantee "no junk" catches is equivalent to the old "no getaway" level. The easiest areas have very low skill level caps, allowing you higher success initially. You will need to have one point of fishing skill (apprentice level fishing training) to fish these.

For information on fishing locations and fishing skill requirements, see Fishing skill requirements by zone.

Fishing previously involved a single large skill number that was increased on an expansion by expansion basis. It has since been reworked alongside other professions, however, to be regionalized; fishing in the Outland, for example, will level the skill for that region only. Before this change there were also books that had to be obtained to learn Expert and Master level fishing (for Outland and Northrend, respectively) and a quest offered by Nat Pagle for the Artisan level. These have been removed, and those who completed the latter requirement before Patch 3.1 can return to Nat Pagle to receive Nat's Lucky Fishing Pole, the reward for the current and minimized edition of that quest.

To learn how to fish, one must speak to a trainer for the appropriate region. These vary based on faction as well as location.

To increase their fishing skill, an angler need only fish in a region for which they have unlocked the appropriate skill. This may at first lead to them catching more grey trash items than fish, but as their skill increases, this will change. Using temporary skill increases (through one or more of the items seen in the section below) will help remedy this earlier and lead to earlier positive results. In addition, fishing daily and world quests may grant permanent skill increases.

There are many items that increase fishing skill beyond the innate skill a character has acquired:

Fishing poles replace the basic Fishing Pole (or the random stick used if no fishing pole is available) and provide a fishing skill bonus when wielded.

Fishing lines are consumables that create a permanent enchantment on a fishing pole. These can only be applied to a fishing pole in your own inventory. You cannot put a line on someone else's soulbound fishing pole.

Fishing lures are consumables that create a temporary enchantment on a fishing pole.

This is a list of rare bait that can be caught in the Broken Isles; the chance to catch a given zone's bait is increased by the Arcane Lure. The bait items can be purchased from vendors in their respective zones for tokens fished up near the location of the vendor or (not including those with limited durations) bought from the Auction House. In addition, this bait may also be caught from a Hyper-Compressed Ocean.

Fishing apparel items provide a fishing skill bonus when worn.

Enchantments for apparel items create a permanent fishing skill bonus on an item, which is then worn to apply the fishing skill bonus.

Consumable items provide a temporary fishing skill bonus when consumed by the character.

These items, which are reusable, also provide buffs to fishing skill.

The following general classes of items can be obtained through Fishing:

• Raw fish - In many regions, different versions of fish are available from salt water and fresh water fishing areas of the same skill level. This does vary between regions/expansions, however.
• Bloated fish - These fish have mistaken a gem for a tasty meal. That they still bit the bobber is proof that fish have a two minute memory. It can be "opened" to retrieve the gem.
• Trophy fish - Offhand items with no stats, such as the 47 Pound Grouper. The higher the weight, the rarer they are; some of these are utilized by roleplayers and others can sell for large amounts on the Auction House
• Alchemy reagents - Oily Blackmouth, Deviate Fish, Firefin Snapper and Stonescale Eel can be used in various pre-Burning Crusade Alchemy recipes; and Glassfin Minnow which produces Ethereal Oil, used for Elixir of Water Walking.
• Containers - Ranging from Venture Company crates (a frequent source of engineering supplies, including ores), Trunks (similar to generic low-level world chests), and Locked Chests. These are frequently caught from pools of debris (see the fishing pools subsection above).
• Essence of Water in Azshara, Mote of Water in Nagrand, or Crystallized Water in Northrend, among others; providing an alternative to farming those items off water elementals. These reagents were in high demand during their respective expansions, and may still sell decently well, as many are unwilling to travel to distant zones to gather resources for important or valuable low-level recipes.
• Raid Bosses - The Lurker Below, as well as Zulian Mudskunk required to summon Gahz'ranka; the latter of these has since been removed There is also a rare chance to 'catch' a monstrosity in Pandaria named Krakkanon, which will appear at the Pandaren Fish of the Day event.
• Junk - Driftwood, Tattered Cloth, and other gray items. Catching a lot of these indicates that your skill level is too low for the zone you're fishing in, save for on Argus, where one has an extremely low chance to catch the Pond Nettle mount among all the trash items.
• Rockhide Strongfish, Steelscale Crushfish, The 1 Ring, Mr. Pinchy and much, much more...

• As of patch 2.2, each cast of fishing will result in a bobber splash; the splash can occur when there are approximately 17, 13, 7, or 3 seconds left of the Fishing channeled spell.
• Turn up the sound — if you are in a quiet area, it is often easier to listen for the fishing bobber effect than to stare at it as you wait for it to splash.
• You can right click the fishing bobber to auto-loot anything caught. Turning on auto-loot will allow you to not have to worry about pressing Shift on each right click.
• If you have auto-loot turned on and your inventory is full when you click, the loot window will stay open, allowing you to make room and manually click.
• Fish caught by fishing can be used as a source of cheap hunter pet food even after cooking it to improve the character's cooking skill. Cooking certain fish also results in unique food buffs.
• Having a macro to equip your weapons or using the Gear manager can be handy if you get attacked while fishing.
• Zooming all the way to the first-person perspective keeps the bobber from ever leaving your field of view, giving you some control over where a cast will go.
• When aggroed by a mob, it is possible to finish your current fishing cast. Damage taken and even stun effects won't break the cast. Most mobs will hit you with little enough damage that you can easily get another fish first.
• When fishing from a school for the specific type of fish contained in that school, here are a few tips: A) If you have a good fishing level relative to the area being fished, you can catch fish of that type from that school on about 90% of the casts when the bobber lands in or at the edge of the school, and the other 10% will be loot crates (where available) not fish of other types. B) Therefore, always cast into the circle of the school or at its edge. C) You can re-cast your line at any time by using the fish command again, so just continually re-cast whenever your bobber lands outside and away from the circle. D) Find an area where there are many pools of the type of fish you seek, and run up and down the coastline fishing only from the pools. E) Mobs along the beach can sometimes be avoided more easily by swimming than by running, so it may help to bring water breathing and swim speed potions. F) This technique is easiest to implement with a hunter.
• As it is very easy to grow bored of fishing, it is a good idea to do something more entertaining at the same time. In fact, this is somewhat vital for anyone required to fish up large amounts of fish. Browse your achievements, chat with your friends, read a book - anything goes as long as it makes time pass. Another good suggestion may be to set your game in windowed mode, turn on "sound in the background" and then watching videos or reading articles on your favorite MMO, World of Warcraft. When you hear the bobber splash, switch quickly to the game and fish up the fish, then start fishing for another before you switch back to the browser.

Characters of any class and any level can successfully fish, but there may be some minor differences between classes, for those considering this choice . There are three factors taken in consideration, though whatever weight they have is pretty personal and/or dependent on location:

• 1) Easy to reach fishing spots, avoiding mobs.
• 2) Options when encountering a mob (or the mob encounters you).
• 3) Options when encountering an enemy player.

Although it is unlikely that one will necessarily choose their class or race based on their ability to fish, stranger things have certainly happened on Azeroth:

• Shamans: Advantages: Water Walking makes it easy to reach fishing spots circumventing mobs and to walk from one spot to another. Ghost Wolf allows for fast traversing short distances. Disadvantages: Relatively large penalty for not having weapon/shield equipped.
• Death knights: Path of Frost gives the same benefit as Water Walking for shamans. Chains of Ice can slow the enemies down, allowing escape. Unholy Presence can aid in travel times.
• Hunters: Advantages: Have pet to aggro nearby mobs. Can Track Humanoids and fishing spots at the same time. Do not rely on melee weapon for their DPS or crowd control, just lack some stats. Judicious use of Camouflage allows hunters to sneak around mobs when necessary.
• Druids: Feral druids do not rely on weapon ability as much as other melee classes. Similar to casters, they just need the stats (this affects level 70 druids rather negatively, as a large amount of attack power comes from their weapon). Druids also have a high amount of mobility; the Feral Swiftness talent, Travel Form, and Aquatic Form (Glyph of Aquatic Form allows a total of 135% speed) making it easy to move from spot to spot. They can also stealth when a player comes near, or can cast Nature's Grasp, rooting any attackers in place and allowing for a quick getaway.
• Mages / other casters: Do not primarily rely on the weapon when aggroed, just miss some stats.
• Monks: Able to fish while Zen Flight is active.
• Priests: Can hover above ('walk on') water. Do not forget to rebuff yourself from time to time unless you want a bath in whatever you're hovering over; especially inadvisable for farming in lava.
• Rogues: Able to stealth past any enemies that may be surrounding the fishing area. Also, inscribing the Glyph of Blurred Speed enables a rogue to sprint on the water for the duration of the ability.

It should also be noted that taller races will have an easier time wading out farther than gnomes or goblins to fish in pools farther from shore.

• Fishing wasn't originally slated for inclusion in World of Warcraft, as it wasn't considered a profession but rather a minigame that had to be implemented using extra code. It was added to the game after Mark Kern requested it as a gift for his wife, who loved fishing both in real life and in Japanese RPG games. Kern approached Eric Dodds, who together with Sam Lantinga put together a working prototype after a couple of days. Kern showed the build to his wife, but she hated it since it was too passive and lacked the action component of JRPG-style fishing. Nevertheless, the WoW developers subsequently decided to include the activity in the final version of the game. (Kern's wife did later come around to liking the minigame.)
• Prior to the Warlords of Draenor expansion, the best resource outside of Blizzard for detailed information on everything involving this profession was the now-defunct website El's Extreme Anglin'. All of the many changes to the profession were documented on this site, and as a tribute to El's tenacity, Salty El was added in Mists of Pandaria as a tribute; she is seen fishing at the Fish of the Day spot. Before the vast changes to professions, El even calculated the approximate times and requirements to level up fishing, as seen below:

• Fishing quests
• Fishing achievements
• Quest fish
• Quest items
• Fishing Equipment List
• Fishing Locations and Levels
• Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza

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