Fishing

Training

0 - 30: Buy from NPC Fisher
30 - 50: Fish in shallow water. Stand on the shore of islands such as Moonglow or Haven and walk around.
50 - 75: Fish off of a dock, a few tiles from the shore. As your skill rises, fish a little bit further and further out. A Crystal Ball of Knowledge comes in very handy to help gauge the best distance from where to fish.
75 - 100: Fish in deep water (gains after 85.0 are only possible in in deep water). Deep water requires the use of a boat to reach. Get on one and sail around. Be prepared to fight Sea Serpents.
80 - 100: Alternatively, as the method of DJ, after you hit 80, you can use SOS's and a Fishing Scroll of Alacrity. When you sail to the SOS coordinates, and use the alacrity scroll before fishing for the SOS, you'll get decent gains by pulling up the random loot before the chest. If you keep runebooks with close coordinates (NE, SE, NW, SW high numbers, and low numbers) and can dry dock your boat quickly and recall to a closer coordinate, you can get a few SOS's in before your alacrity scroll ends. Note that after around 95, it's slow and repetitive.
- 100 - 120: If your lucky enough to get a fishing scroll you will be on your way to legendary. You will spend long hours out to sea with slow gains the whole way. To pass the time do the fish monger quests (requires High Seas).

When a fishing spot has been "used up" a message will appear over the character's head "The fish don't seem to be biting here". This means no more fish, or skill gains, can be had at that spot and so it is time to move to another location at least 8 steps away.

Crystal Ball of Knowledge

If you have a Crystal Ball of Knowledge, turn it on and try out different fishing locations until the ball reports "Optimal" difficulty. It will let you know exactly where the optimal spots are. The distance is about one step further away from land every 5 skill points. Once you reach 95.1, it will only ever say "Easy" even in deep water.

Expect to catch around 3,800 fish to go from 50 to 100 skill(as well as plenty of nets, treasure maps, white pearls, delicate scales and footwear) while using the crystal ball under optimal conditions. If you just go straight to deep water after 85 without using a crystal ball, you may unknowingly be fishing in slightly over-challenging areas, slowing the rate of skillgain.

Items

The following items can be fished up instead of normal fish.

Fishing Skill: 0%
	Footwear The true horror of fishing, these hordes of footwear will fill your backpacks up quickly. It is suggested to simply drop them as they just don't make any real gold. Though they are useful if you are planning on starting up a cobblary.
	Normal Fish These come in four colors, their color does not make any difference. They each will give 4 raw fish steaks each when cut with a bladed weapon.
	Highly Peculiar Fish Restores your stamina by 10.
	Prized Fish Raises your intelligence by 12% for 150 seconds.
	Truly Rare Fish Raises your strength by 12% for 150 seconds.
	Wondrous Fish Raises your dexterity by 10% for 150 seconds.
Fishing Skill: 75%
	Message in a Bottle aka: MiB When used it will turn into a Waterstained SOS . Or if you're lucky it will turn into an Ancient SOS , which about 1 in 25 does.
	Metal and Wood Chests Treasure chests are fished up by the use of a Waterstained SOS from a Message in a Bottle. They are the only treasure chest that can be taken and used for home storage. These chests will carry a treasure rating of 1 - 3.
	Ancient Chests This chest is fished up by use of an Ancient SOS. The chest is a level 4 treasure chest and always colored white. Inside these chests will also be a Fabled Fishing Net that will summon up a large group of sea monsters including the Leviathan.
Fishing Skill: 80%
	Special Fishing Net These can be found as loot on sea serpents or in fished up treasure chests. When used, the net appears to throw out many fishing lines and a set of nasty monsters will spawn, consisting of Water Elementals, Sea Serpents, Deep Sea Serpents and Krakens. There is a chance for it to spawn in one of the 14 special colors:
	White Pearls Used to make Pendant of the Magi, Arcanist's Wild Staff, Lightweight Shortbow, Spellblade of Defense, Luckblade, and the Adventurer's Machete. It is also an Imbuing ingredient needed to imbue the any of the regular Slayer properties onto weapons. These can be sold at a fairly decent cost.
	Big Fish A rare fish that one can use a Taxidermy Kit on to make a nice looking trophy which may be mounted in a player's home. When caught, a big fish lands at the fisher's feet and not in their backpack. Their weight is random, the heavier it is, the more rare. Both weight and the fisherman's name will be displayed on the trophy, but only if the fish weighed more than 20 stones. Lightest Big Fish: 1 Stone by Tolo Da'Pesca Heaviest Big Fish: 225 Stones by Rowan of the Origin Shard.
	Delicate Scales Used with Imbuing skill to add Use Best Weapon Skill (UBWS) property onto weapons.
Fishing Skill: 90%
	Treasure Map You can fish up a level 1 or level 2 treasure map that is for a land adventure of very easy standards. Most new players can handle the spawns from a level 1 treasure map.

Quests

Fishing-related quests were added as a series of Professional Fisher Quests with the High Seas booster expansion in late 2010. Some of the quests are only available to Fishers with 100+ skill.

4x4 Fishing

While fishing on a boat or on a pier you can do what is called 4x4 fishing. This is where you target 4 spaces to the NE, SE, SW, and NW of your character while fishing. You can farm each of these locations for quite a while before having to move on again. Remember, you will need to move 12 spaces instead of just 8 to begin fishing again.