WoW Fishing Addons

You can make an impressive amount of gold in WoW simply by fishing. You might even become the first Warcraft Millionaire!

I strongly recommend the use of an addon for fishing. This will save some of the tedium buy automating looting and lure application.

Back in the early days of World of Warcraft there were a number of fishing addons developed with varying degrees of usefulness. As is often the case, these became neglected and stoped working with newer WoW patches. Luckily one very talented developer came to the rescue and developed a one stop fishing addon. He has continued to maintain and update this and it is now available for the latest WoW patch.

The addon is Fishing Buddy and, amongst other things, it allows you to:

• Double right-click to cast
• Auto add lures
• Auto loot fish
• Keep track of your previous catches
• Choose your fishing outfit and easily change

Fishing Buddy is free to download and use. It's still in beta testing but I've been using it for a while without any problems.

Grab this if you spend any time fishing in Warcraft.

High Level WoW Fishing

The real gold to be made from fishing in World of Warcraft is at higher levels. Higher in both terms of character level and in fishing skill.

The best "old world" fish is Stonescale Eel. Demand for these is sporadic, I've seen them selling for 3 gold each at times. A few days later demand may fall off and you can't give them away. I usually just keep them and check for demand every few days.

The best places to fish for these are:

Bay of Storms in Azshara
Feathermoon Stronghold in Feralas

Feathermoon itself is Alliance only but Horde on non-PvP servers can fish just outside the stronghold without problems.

Another fish to consider is Whitescale Salmon from Winterspring and Eastern Plaguelands. These sell easily for a gold each.

If you can get to the Outlands (Burning Crusade expansion), you can make a lot more gold once your fishing skill is 350+. A favorite of mine is Goldenscale Vendorfish which I guess was put in as some sort of joke by Blizzard. Either way, you can turn around and sell it to any vendor for 6 gold. It seems that these can be caught in any Outlands zone. I've caught several in Zangarmarsh and Nagrand. You won't catch many of these, maybe two an hour but even these few improve your hourly gold rate.

Another favorite Outlands fish is the Furious Crawdad which sells for between 1.5 and 2 gold any day. These are very easy to catch in Blackwind Lake in Terrokar Forest. The bad news is that this lake requires a flying mount to reach. The good news is that the drop rate is around 40% so it's easy to make 60 to 80 gold an hour on these.

Terrokar Forest also has Golden Darter in the area around Allerian Stronghold. These will sell for 2 gold but have a lower drop rate than the Furious Crawdad.

Other outlands fish can sell well at times depending on demand. Many fish are a key component in high level cooking recipes and if somebody is trying to lvl up cooking then they will get snapped up quickly in the AH.

Gold from Low Level WoW Fishing

Fishing in World of Warcraft is a "secondary" skill which you can learn in addition to your two main professions. Other secondary skills are First Aid and Cooking. Although many people will learn first aid for fast heals between, or during, fights and cooking for the stat foods you can create, fishing is often ignored. This is a shame since certain fish are in high demand for use in trade skill recipes. Unfortunately you will often catch a pile of "junk fish" which are virtually worthless apart from their occasional use in cooking recipes.

The secret to making gold from WoW fishing isn't how you fish, or how high your skill level, but in WHERE you fish. Fish in the canals in Stormwind and you will make 1 gold an hour if you are lucky. Fish in the right zone and you can pull in 60 gold an hour.

Let me say right away that WoW fishing can be boring and, personally, I never fish for more than 20 minutes or so. I fish when I'm waiting for a group or maybe when I'm winding down after a raid. It may suit your personality more, so give it a try.

If you have never fished before, all you need is a fishing pole purchased from the local fishing vendor. You learn the fishing skill from the trainer who is usually close to the vendor in the newbie zone. Go to the edge of the nearest body of water and click on the fishing icon. I usually move this to the toolbar for ease of use. Watch the float and it will bob under the water. Right click on the float after it bobs and, if your skill is high enough, you catch a fish and maybe increase your skill level. You won't catch many fish at first but don't get discouraged, your skill will soon increase.

So, where is the gold in fishing?

Three fish are in demand for lower level character. Firefin, Oily Blackmouth and Deviate Fish.

Firefin can be found in:

The Blackwolf River in Stonetalon Mountains
Dreadmurk Shore in Dustwallow Marsh
Western Strand near Southshore in Hillsbrad Foothills

You don't need to do anything special to catch these, just fish as normal in the zone and a proportion of the fish will be Firefin. Sell the Firefin you catch in the Auction House. Check to see what other are selling them for and match or beat their prices. The normal price is around 10 silver per fish. Not much, but this can be caught in conjunction with Oily Blackmouth (see below)

Oily Blackmouth can be caught in:

Menethil Harbor in Wetlands
Western Strand near Southshore, Hillsbrad Foothills
Zoram'gar Outpost Ashenvale
The Merchant Coast in The Barrens
Near Northwatch Hold also in The Barrens
Baradin Bay

Notice that both Firefin and Oily Blackmouth can be caught in Southshore which makes it first choice for low level WoW fishing gold. You can usually make between 15 and 25 gold per hour fishing in Southshore, depending on pries on your server.

Deviate fish can only be caught in The Barrens. Any oasis has these as well as the lake inside the Wailing Caverns instance. This is a really good money-maker for Alliance characters, selling on the Alliance AH as very few Alliance go to The Barrens, especially on PvP servers, for obvious reasons. It's easy enough once you get to level 25 or so as most Horde in The Barrens are lower level. If you get aggro or they gang up on you, just zone into Wailing Caverns in your own instance where you can fish all day undisturbed. I've seen Deviate Fish sell for a gold each in the Alliance AH on PvP servers. Prices for Horde are much lower - around 20 silver each.

You can make a lot more - up to 60 gold per hour - at higher levels which I will cover tomorrow.