Hello. My name is PTD, and I’m an anti Fish-ite. What the heck does that mean? Well, it means I hate fishing! Not that I dislike the people that fish, per se, but just that I couldn’t ever see myself leveling fishing. I thought it was a HUGE waste of time.
Now, before you go off and judge me, I will say that I did TRY to like fishing on a few occasions. I started many alts with the intention of working on all THREE secondary professions as I leveled. It just never worked out that way. I cooked. I made bandages. I didn’t fish. You see, for me, it was always easy to fit in cooking or first aid while I did other things. I could always find time to make bandages while waiting for groups to form, and cooking was always a quick stop in any capital city (usually IF for me) after hitting up the AH. Fishing, though, always seemed like a waste of time.
Cast. Stare at the screen, waiting for the stupid bobber to move. Don’t DARE look away from the screen, otherwise you’ll wonder if the bobber moved while you looked elsewhere! Right click the bobber once it moves, and hope the fish doesn’t get away. Ugh. With cooking, or first aid, or any other tradeskill, you can set it and forget it, at least a little. I can make all the roasted clefthoof I have the mats for with one click. I can make exactly 17 heavy netherweave bandages with just a few clicks.
Fishing? Forget about it. You better be ready to focus, son.
So I think the highest I ever got with fishing was in the mid 40s. And that was with my old, forgotten alchemist, when I wanted to be able to fish up oily blackmouths.
That was the highest, until yesterday.
I finally faced my fears, and made an effort to level fishing a bit with my priest. My priest is 62 now, and he had been shelved for a long time when I got him to about level 26. Leveling had slowed to a crawl with him, and I couldn’t take it. So at some point he became a tradeskill alt, leveling Tailoring and Enchanting. That was all good and fine until he capped out his skill due to level.
Anyhow, that’s unimportant to this post. I picked him back up, got shadowform, blah blah blah. Now he is my “main” alt, and the alt most likely to next hit 70. He has his Tailoring at 360 and Enchanting at 300. I am VERY thankful that I did pick him back up, as those two skills are very useful.
“So, PTD, what the heck does this have to do with fishing?”
Well, the other day I found myself in IF with the priest. I realized that since I had parked him as a tradeskill alt for a long time, I never picked up a secondary tradeskill. Not a one. No cooking, no first aid, and yes, no fishing. In interest of leveling cooking quickly and cheaply, I had read on Lootables.com (where I go for ALL my tradeskill leveling info) that the best way to do that was to fish.
Fine. I’ll fish.
And they were right. In no time at all, I had both fishing and cooking up to 150. Along with that, it was the perfect opportunity for me to level my Enchanting skill a bit to boot. I’m finally at the point where some people might actually WANT some of the enchants I can do, so I offered up the orange ones that I had mats for in trade for decent prices. So not only did I get my fishing and cooking up, but I also got up to 311 in enchanting, and MADE MONEY DOING IT!
Woot!
Everything is better if you can make money!
And it helped me realize another miracle, you can actually MAKE MONEY from some professions. (Poor, ill-informed sod that I am, my two 70s have probably the 2 least profitable tradeskills…Leatherworking and Engineering. I rarely make much off of either, other than primals occasionally with the Engineer.) Wonder of wonders, I think I found a new way to pass the time. Fish in Stormwind while hocking enchants. Yay for multi-tasking!
So now, dear fish lovers out there, I understand you. I am ready to admit that I had an irrational hatred of the profession, and I’m here to come clean and ask that you allow me in your ranks. Heck, if this continues, I may even soften my position on Murlocs.
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Just be aware that once you get about 280+ fishing it takes about 7-15 successful casts to gain a single skill point… took me about a week just for getting from 320 to 375
/em puts his fingers in his ears
I had heard that, actually. Hopefully by then I have the really good enchants!
Yeah, gaining points post-300 suck.
— HOWEVER —
It is 100%, totally, completely, and while-heartedly worth your time to get to at least 320. I am in no way exaggerating when I say that I can make 150g per hour from *casual* fishing. I’ve actually been working on a blog post to explain how profoundly easy it is.
Short version:
1. Grab the fishing daily.
2. Fish for the 10 minutes that your lure lasts.
3. You *will* skill up one or two points in that 10 minutes.
4. You *will* catch whatever it is that you need for the daily.
5. As you are doing your other dailies, fly to Zang and fish for another 10 minutes.
6. Again, you will skill up a few times.
5. If you keep casting and aren’t just afking it, you *will* catch between 20g and 30g worth of stuff in that 10 minutes. Goldenscale Vendorfish ftw, baby. 6g each. Motes of Water. Greens. Cooking mats.
The trick? Fish out the schools of fish and nothing else. Never cast in empty water. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.
As we are coming together for an SSC raid and everyone is running to Org to respec or buy food or whatnot (I am always early), I will run around the big lake in Zang and fish. When we get the 2-minute warning I hit Zabra’jin to sell off all of the crap and free up bag space. I almost always end up being able to cook a few extra Golden Fishsticks, which only makes the healers pay that much more attention to me during the raid. Everyone wins.
And! Bonus! You get fishing gear from the daily fishing quest! I’ve gotten a really nice fishing pole, fishing hat (on-use apply lure), and other stuff. Just like getting recipes from the cooking daily.
Do the fishing daily 3 or 4 times per week and you’ll be at 375 before Wrath, no problem. And you’ll pad your pockets with buff food and gold at the same time.
I fish with my druid in Terrokar while waiting in the AV que.
Golden Darter goes for about 35g a stack in AH. I’m a resto-druid and I get so many I sell them.
There is money to be made in fishing.
If you decide you want to get your fishing about 225, you will curse Nat Pagle and all of his spawn. Then again, I did that quest at level, and I was nearly eaten alive in a few of those zones. It was like deep-water fishing in a rowboat.
Rick O is correct about fishing’s money-making abilities — it’s very lucrative, especially if you can pull up some motes of water. (A good fisherman never reveals his fishing spots. OK, OK, Nagrand.) And the fishing daily is surprisingly lucrative, too. Most Bags of Fishing Treasures have several gold and the uber Sharpened Fish Hook. Most times, there’s a gray item. Do *not* throw it away. That Mithril Shaving Razor without a sale price on the tooltip? Sold it to a vendor for 15 freakin’ gold.
One thing, though: Don’t be afraid to fish outside the fish nodes in higher-level zones. (I’m thinking Nagrand particularly.) Every fish except for the Barbed Gill Trout has high AH potential.
P.S. If your speakers are turned up high enough, you can look away from the bobber. Just listen for the splash. It’s all good.