WoW Fishing Skill Tips

WoW Ultimate Gold and Professions Guide

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How successful you’ll be at fishing in WoW depends on your level of fishing skill.

Fishing Skill

It used to be that your fishing skill level affected your fishing profession in two ways:
  1. You couldn’t fish in a fishing spot that was higher than your skill level.
  2. If you were allowed to cast in a spot, you would sometimes get the message ‘Your fish got away!’
But that changed with patch 3.1.

Now a player of any skill level can fish anywhere in the WoW world. And you will always catch something. Well, that it unless you click too late on the bobber, in which case you’ll see the message ‘No fish are hooked.’

Click Here to Level Fishing to 450 Quickly & Cheaply.

So if you always catch something, is your fishing skill level irrelevant?

Nope. Your skill level will determine how much ‘junk’ you catch vs. fish or other useful items, in conjunction with the fishing location’s ‘no-junk’ level.

Each fishing spot now has a no-junk level associated with it. How often you catch junk depends on your skill level and the level of the fishing spot.

Here’s the formula to determine how often you’ll catch junk:
(your skill level/fishing area no-junk skill level) ^2 ) * 100
Note ^2 means to the power of 2.
So if the no-junk level of a spot is 300 and your skill level is 100,
(100/300)^2) * 100
(.33 x .33) * 100
= 11%

So 11% of the time you’ll catch something worthwhile and 89% of the time you’ll catch junk.

Junk

So what exactly is junk? Junk is one of these items:
Driftwood, Sickly Fish, Tangled Fishing Line, Tattered Cloth, Weeds, Empty Rum Bottle, Old Boot, Rock, Tree Branch, and Water Snail.

Is junk worthless? Nope. Unlike the old way where a fish getting away meant that you are none the better, catching junk is useful. For one thing, it increases your skill level. After all, you still had to reel it in, right? For another, you can sell what you get to vendors. The junk isn’t very valuable but it’s still better than nothing.

Increasing Your Skill

So how do you increase your skill so that you can fish more effectively?

There are a few different ways.
  • Fishing Poles
    The poles have skill levels associated with them, so your fishing skill increases when you equip that pole. Time to toss that basic pole you bought from a trade vendor and get an upgrade!

    Most of these fishing poles are rewards for a successful quest. The highest level pole (Arcanite) can only be acquired by winning the Sunday Stranglethorn fishing contest.

    Here are a list of poles and their increase in skill level:
    • Blump Family Fishing Pole —Skill: +3
    • Strong Fishing Pole —Skill: +5
    • Darkwood Fishing Pole —Skill: +15
    • Big Iron Fishing Pole —Skill: +20
    • Seth’s Graphite Fishing Pole2 —Skill: +20
    • Nat Pagle’s Extreme Angler FC-50003 —Skill: +20
    • Nat’s Lucky Fishing Pole4 —Skill: +25
    • Bone Fishing Pole5 —Skill: +30
    • Jeweled Fishing Pole5 —Skill: +30
    • Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole6 —Skill: +30
    • Arcanite Fishing Pole7 —Skill: +40

  • Fishing Line
    Just like in the real world, more skilled fishermen use better quality fishing line. There are two different fishing lines that will increase your skill:
    • Spun Truesilver Fishing Line +3
    • High Test Eternium Fishing Line +5

  • Fishing Bait
    Using certain bait with your fishing pole also increases fishing skill, but only for a limited amount of time and then it must be reapplied. Here are a list of bait and their increases:
    • Shiny Bauble +25 for 10 minutes
    • Nightcrawlers +50 for 10 minutes
    • Bright Baubles +75 for 10 minutes
    • Flesh Eating Worm +75 for 10 minutes
    • Aquadynamic Fish Attractor +100 for 10 minutes
    • Sharpened Fish Hook +100 for 10 minutes
    • Glow Worm +100 for 60 minutes

  • Fishing Apparel
    Have you ever seen a professional fisherman in a baseball cap and flip-flops? Get these sporty-looking fishing duds and put them on for some extra fishing skill:
    • Nat Pagle’s Extreme Anglin’ Boots +5
    • Lucky Fishing Hat +5
    • Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat +5

  • Consumables
    Unlike real life, drinking lager in WoW actually increases your skill:
    • Captain Rumsey’s Lager +10 for 3 minutes

  • Enchant
    Finally, you can get a tiny amount of extra skill by enchanting any pair of gloves and then putting them on when fishing:
    • Formula: Enchant Gloves – Fishing +2

Keep in mind, though, that there really isn’t any benefit from having a total skill level higher than the fishing spots’ no-junk level.

If the location has a level of 400 and your skill level is 500, you won’t catch junk ever. But the same would be true if you had a skill level of 400.

Ultimate WoW Guide

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