WoW Classic Fishing Overview

Fishing is one of the most underappreciated professions in World of Warcraft. It’s a good way to relax when you need a break from quests and combat, and it can also be a good source of gold and materials for crafting consumables. It’s a secondary profession, which means that every character can take advantage of it. The most committed fisherfolk will even be able to get some unique rewards by competing in a weekly tournament in Stranglethorn Vale.

This guide covers all of the basics of Fishing in WoW Classic and some of the cool things you can do with the skill. Be sure to check out our other Fishing guides for more specific topics:

Fishing Overview

Fishing Leveling

Fishing Equipment

Fishing Tournament

Fish & Loot

Fishing Pools

Deviate Fish

Advantages of Fishing

• Making Gold: Fish are used in both Cooking and Alchemy, so you’ll be able to sell a lot of what you catch to other players. You’ll also be able to catch treasure chests and other valuable items such as Essence of Water from fishing pools.
• Buff Food: Some of the best food offering combat bonuses can be made by cooking fish. This includes Winter Squid (+10 Agility), Raw Summer Bass (+10 Spirit), Raw Nightfin Snapper (+8 mp5), and Large Raw Mightfish/Raw Glossy Mightfish (+10 Stamina).
• Raiding: To summon Gahz’ranka, an optional side boss in the Zul’Gurub raid, you’ll need a total of 350 Fishing skill to fish him up. A lure will be required to reach this.
• Tournament: The Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Extravaganza is a weekly event that offers some useful rewards, including Fishing equipment and Hook of the Master Angler. You’ll need to have leveled your Fishing skill if you want to participate.

Fishing While Leveling

People often neglect to focus on Fishing until long after they have already hit max level. However, just like with Cooking, Fishing can offer a lot of small advantages for focusing on it while playing the game. Regardless of how you choose to play it, Fishing is definitely the slowest profession to level up, so it is not a good option for those trying to quickly get to max level.

Fishing for Cooking

Fishing synergizes well with Cooking. There are a lot of Cooking recipes that call for fish. If you want to level your Cooking, leveling Fishing at the same time can help that. You first catch the fish and level Fishing while doing so, then use the fish to boost Cooking at the same time. As a bonus, you can use some of the cooked items to help you with leveling with their Stamina and Spirit buff.

Hunters and Fishing

If you are a Hunter, fishing can be especially useful. Many Hunter pets will eat fish, so you can catch fish to feed your pet rather than having to farm beasts or pay vendors for food.

Rogues and Fishing

Once in a while while fishing you will get locked boxes. This is especially true if you are fishing the wreckage pools. These boxes provide an alternate method to level your Lockpicking skill as a Rogue.

Fishing for Beginners

Fishing is a secondary profession, which means that everyone has access to it. Once you reach level 5 you have the ability to permanently learn the profession and get started catching fish. Almost always when you find a fishing trainer you will see a fishing supplies NPC right next to them. They sell fishing poles, lures, and some basic low level fish. Go ahead and learn the profession from the trainer and then buy a fishing pole from the supplier. You should also buy lures from them too. You may be tempted to not to spend money on lures, but you will find that if you try to fish without them that you will fail to catch fish – a lot! Lures provide that boost to help make fishing not a complete waste of time.

Now that we have the skill and equipment to fish, let’s try to catch something. Go somewhere with a body of water. For now as a beginner it is important to choose somewhere that is low level. Starting zones and capital cities are all good places to start.

Equip your fishing pole and then right-click on the lure from your inventory and click on your fishing pole on your character window. It will apply the lure’s effect to help boost your Fishing skill. Next, go to your spellbook and drag the Fishing icon onto your action bar. If you now click on it while facing water you will cast your line and a bobber will appear on the surface of the water. If you try to cast and something isn’t right you will see an error stating that your cast isn’t in a fishable location or that you don’t have a fishing pole equipped. Water must be deep enough to be fishable and you also have to have the skill necessary to fish in certain areas.

Now that your bobber is on the water, you need to watch it carefully. There will be a channeling bar that shows up to show you the progress. A fish can be hooked randomly at generally anywhere along the channeling (not just at the end) so you must pay attention to your bobber. If a fish does bite you will see your bobber get pulled on and hear an audible splash. You need to right-click on the bobber to catch the fish. You only have about 2 seconds to do this, otherwise you will get an error saying “Your fish got away.” If you accidentally right-click on the bobber before a fish bites, you will get another error saying that no fish were hooked. It is possible for the bar to go all the way to the end of the channel without having any fish bite. This is not common, but unfortunately normal. Just recast and hope for better luck next time.

So you got a fish to bite and you quickly right-clicked on the bobber. Hopefully you will see a loot window appear with a fish in it. If so, congratulations! You caught your first fish. If you want to practice efficient fishing you can hold the shift key while right-clicking, which will automatically loot the fish you catch. This can be helpful to streamline the process.

But even after doing everything correct, you can still get the message that your fish still got away. What gives? Well, fishing is very skill dependent. You need a large skill differential compared to the location where you are fishing for the fish to never get away. And the lower that difference is, the more likely it is for fish to get away. We will get into this in more detail, but this is why you always want to use a lure! Not only does it suck to not catch fish after waiting so long for a fish to bite, you will notice that catching nothing also doesn’t increase your skill points.

You must catch fish to be able to level your Fishing skill!

Leveling and Training Fishing

Apprentice and Journeyman Fishing can be easily learned from the many Fishing Trainers found in the world. Every major city and many towns have Fishing Trainers to learn from. Apprentice takes you up to 75 points and Journeyman can be learned at 50. Once you get up to 125 skill you can learn Expert Fishing by reading the book Expert Fishing – The Bass and You. This can be bought from Old Man Heming at Booty Bay in Stranglethorn Vale or often found for a marked up price on the Auction House. After maxing out your Fishing skill at 225 you are finally able to get the last quest to work towards Artisan. This requires seeking out Nat Pagle himself off the coast of Dustwallow Marsh to do the quest Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme.

For a complete walkthrough for leveling Fishing, check out our Fishing Leveling Guide. You’ll also find zone Fishing levels and Fishing Trainer locations on that page.

Fishing Equipment, Loot, and Rewards

There are several pieces of equipment you can use to improve your Fishing skill, including special fishing poles and lures. We cover them all in detail in our Fishing Equipment Guide. Many of the most unique Fishing-related items are earned through a weekly tournament that is held starting in Phase 4. Our Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Extravaganza Guide covers this event, including all of its rewards and plenty of tips for competing.

Fishing itself has plenty of rewards, from fish (obviously) to a variety of other items and materials. Take a look at our Fish List & Loot Guide to see all of the rewards you can reap through Fishing, plus our Fishing Pools & Locations page for where you can find those lucrative fishing pools.

Fishing Quests

There are several quests in the game that require Fishing to complete. There are a few quests involved in the Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Extravaganza which are covered in our event guide. You’ll also need to complete a quest to learn Artisan Fishing. The remaining handful of quests are all faction exclusive.

There are three Fishing quests for Alliance in Darkshore: Gaffer Jacks, Electropellers, and The Family and the Fishing Pole. Completing the latter two quests awards some lures and a fishing pole. Alliance also have the quest Selling Fish in Redridge Mountains.

Horde only get the quest Snapjaws, Mon!, which doesn’t actually require Fishing, but does award a fishing pole when completed.

Summoning Gahz’ranka

Gahz’ranka is an optional boss in the Zul’Gurub raid who can only be summoned through Fishing.

With a high enough Fishing skill, you will be able to fish in pools of Muddy Churning Waters inside Zul’Gurub. Doing so will allow you to catch Zulian Mudskunks. Five of these items can be combined with a Mudskunk Lure, which can be obtained from Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh. He only offers this to you after you complete the quest Nat’s Measuring Tape.

The lure can then be used at Pagle’s Point inside the raid and the boss will appear. You then have a chance at loot such as Nat Pagle’s Broken Reel (a critical trinket for tanks in Naxxramas) or the Tome of Polymorph: Turtle, which can be worth a lot to resell on the Auction House.

Advanced Fishing Facts

Fishing is a very unique profession where you will get different results based on how and when you fish – either the water source, time of day, or even the day of the year. Yes the fishing results actually change just like seasonal fishing in the real world.

Salinity Exists in Azeroth

There are different results depending on if the water is freshwater or saltwater. Fish like the Raw Whitescale Salmon can only be found in freshwater – inland rivers and lakes. Others like Stonescale Eel are only found in saltwater along the coast. In general as long as the type of water is the same, the entire zone has the same loot table. There are exceptions to this rule such as Azshara’s Bay of Storms and Stranglethorn Vale’s Jaguero Isle.

Seasonal Catches

You will be able to catch different kinds of fish depending on the current date. This affects two fish: Raw Summer Bass and the Winter Squid. I’m guessing that you can figure out roughly when each one is available, but here are the exact dates:

• Winter Squid can be caught from September 23 to March 19
• Raw Summer Bass can be fished from March 20 to September 22

This is important for melee classes to know because Winter Squid is a very popular raid consumable that will need to be stocked up in large quantities to take care of the needs of the summer months.

Time of Day Catches

In addition to seasonal changes, there are some fish that will be easier to catch at certain times of day. This rate is based on the server time. Daily catch rates follow a 6-hour rule, meaning that there are 4 different rates throughout the day that dictate the loot tables of any given location.

• Time Window 1: 12 AM – 6 AM
• Time Window 2: 6 AM – 12 PM
• Time Window 3: 12 PM – 6 PM
• Time Window 4: 6 PM – 12 AM

Fish affected by daily catch rates can fall into two different probability bins. Some have a zero percent chance to be caught in their off hours while others are simply more rare. Fish fall into either a night or day type fish. Fishing pools are unaffected by the time of day, so this rule only applies to fish in open water.

Day Fish

Here are the fish that can be caught at a higher rate during the day and their drop rates based on the time windows listed above.

Night Fish

Here are the fish that can be caught at a higher rate at night and their drop rates based on the time windows listed above.