I love to fish. Perhaps not as much as Keredria — who has successfully made it a source of livelihood for her character — but I definitely enjoy sitting down with a good book and listening for splashy sounds. Oh, and occasionally the "AHH!! EEE!!" of a monster requesting that I /flex the 14 "randomly chosen" Balance talent points I have. Because of my love for fishing, I have tried to win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza on a few occasions. "Tried" being the operative word. I haven’t had much success and took a hiatus from attempts after I had to hold myself back from letting loose a stream of expletives at Trolls and Orcs putting their bobbers in my Tastyfish nodes! Really, I think if you say a bunch of stuff either in caps or with exclamation points at the end, it should at least appear as "Phaelia jumps up and down and flaps her arms angrily at you" to the opposite faction.
Being Easter Sunday, I thought I might have a better than normal chance of winning the fishing contest, so I made the trek out to Booty Bay, set my hearthstone to the inn there, and alt-tabbed out to read two recently published — and bookmarked — articles: Keredria’s Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza and The Game Dame’s How I Won the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. Both contained some helpful information, including a tip from Keredria about ensuring that your bobber lands squarely within the pool. I’d like to share a little bit of what else I learned, though obviously I didn’t win so you may want to take my advice with a grain of (sea) salt.
- (No) more dots! Until Patch 2.4, Fish tracking won’t work for pools of Tastyfish, so don’t make the mistake of riding along the shore on your epic mount, distressed at a lack of yellow dots. You’ll actually have to look for Tastyfish pools by panning your camera out as you travel. Because these pools don’t show up on your map, it can be really helpful to use an addon like Cartographer: Fishing that automatically adds the locations of previously-fished pools to your map. I also recommend FishingAce for fast, right click casting.
Bring
#showtooltip Speckled Tastyfish
This will create a button with a picture of the Speckled Tastyfish and a count of how many you have in your inventory. No more time wasted opening your inventory and "fishing around" to get an idea of how you’re doing!
- Dress appropriately. It’s very hot in Stranglethorn Vale, so I advise against wearing heavy plate armor. (baked Gnome Warrior, anyone?) At the same time, the vegetation along the shore is pretty sparse so plan to cover up. This is especially important for preserving a delicate Night Elf complexion. I personally opted for a well-made [Crochet Hat], a pair of [Knitted Sandals], and a locality-appropriate [Sundress]. You might have mistaken me for a native if not for the pale, pink skin and the fact that all my teeth are inside my mouth.
- Drink lots of fluids. Along the same lines, be sure to stay hydrated. I prefer something with fruit juice and Rumsey Rum Black Label, electrolytes be damned!
- Remember Nagle’s Law. If anything can aggro, it will aggro. Don’t waste precious time crossing your fingers that something won’t attack you before you’re able to completely fish out a pool. Kill it with a Moonfire and a Wrath, and you won’t have to worry about it. The mobs are only level 40 and take minimal time to dispatch.
Use Aquatic Form. There are several stretches of shore where an inlet makes for an inconvenient and time-consuming trek around to continue looking for pools. Don’t be shy about riding right into the water, shapeshifting into Aquatic Form, and swimming across to the other side as a shortcut.- Don’t rile the natives. At least not the guards of Grom’gol. You can travel along the shore between the water and spiked, wooden fence looking for pools, but don’t try peeking inside. Stick close to the shore or you’ll find yourself pursued by a "welcoming committee" of level 65 Orcs who very much do not observe the peace of Moonglade.
I actually got very close to winning this time, having collected thirty-seven fish by the time the winner was announced. Despite this, I’m not sure if I’m going to keep trying. The level of competition is really high, and people aren’t shy about stepping on each other’s toes (this hurts when you’re wearing sandals) — even when they’re the same faction. And unfortunately, the rewards for rare catches are pretty meager, each affording +5 to Fishing skill. I think I’d be better off fishing for fun and profit in Terokkar, Nagrand, or Zangarmarsh.
For more exciting fishing goodness than you can shake a (fish)stick at, be sure to check out the compilation of 2.4 changes over at El’s Extreme Anglin’! And if you’re a sad Night Elf at missing out on the fishing fun but find the idea of levelling the skill too daunting, read Amanna’s in-depth Alliance Fishing/Cooking levelling guide!
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@Andre: Oh, sorry. The last two lines are to first activate your lures and then to apply them to your weapon (in this case, your fishing pole). Without the second line, you would end up with the lures on your mouse cursor and not on your pole! @Flawless: Valenna changed his macro like that, too. I have my regular weapon mapped (for the purpose of an Innervate swap) and only use one modifier key, though. Nice change, though....
March 24th, 2008 at 6:48 am
I wish I could stand that tournament. It sounds like fun and the hat reward is cool-looking, but I hate when people start fishing on the same pool as I’m - and it happens really often when I’m farming Mr. Pinchy.
Good thing 2.4 is bringing a new and better hat!
Good luck if you’re trying again
March 24th, 2008 at 7:55 am
To me, the Fishing Extravaganza is an amazing and wonderful couple of hours: it is the only time each week that the Horde on my server take a break from killing Alliance on sight in STV!!! … I also have yet to win.
March 24th, 2008 at 8:15 am
“Trolls and Orcs putting their bobbers in my Tastyfish nodes!” - Yikes, how does Mr. Phae feel about this?
March 24th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Regarding Rule #5 - if you are a hunter, just put your pet on defensive (or aggressive) and let him do the work for you!
Remember though, you can’t cast your rod if you’re in combat.
(this works very well when fishing Deviates)
March 24th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Sorry to hear you didn’t win Phaelia! I think its more about luck than anything else… how many other people are there, where the pools happen to spawn… It is super frustrating when you are so close! I took many many weeks off from frustration before I finally won.
Perhaps you need to send a prayer and make an offering to the fishing gods before your next attempt?
March 24th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Oh Phaelia. Another campy cheeky yet smart post!
Keep fishing girl!
March 24th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
[...] committed to fishing long enough to be competitive in it. But I’m reconsidering that after reading these extremely fun tips from Resto4Life. Some of them are Druid specific (I bet the Shaman waterwalking spell would come in [...]
March 24th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I wish i had the patience for fishing. I tried it once and got up in the 50’s.
I love those two pics though Phae! ^_^
March 24th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
I’d tell you how to win the fishing tournament but I don’t feel like sharing now…
Ah what the heck: get a few guildies, make sure one of them is a warlock and let him summon you to the next pool. I actually did that for a friend awhile back, and he still didn’t win.
March 25th, 2008 at 3:27 am
sorry, had to remove
March 25th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Just saw this in the patch notes for today:
Find Fish now correctly tracks Schools of Tastyfish and Muddy Churning Waters.
What effects this will have on the tournament, I have no idea (I’ve never been, so I don’t know exactly how crazy it is), but there ya go.
March 26th, 2008 at 9:47 am
A guildy of mine won it 2 weeks a ago. From what he said they had a full raid going on for it. Not exactly sure how they did it though…
TBH I like fishing as it is. Giving me Golden darters for raiding and a few occasional gold pieces to cover some of my raiding expenses… I don t care maxing my +fishing since most of the time I can get about 100g an hour extra simply fishing outside Shatt or Garadar with only a few escapes and minor ganking…
March 26th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I’ve always been curious about the Fishing ‘Ganza, though I never have tried it. Much as I love fishing, I always imagined that the competition would be contrary to the meditative essence of fishing that I enjoy… the personal struggles… Elf vs. Fish… Elf vs. Rumsey Mug! …the stunning triumphs! …the heartbreaking getaways! These are the real (reel?) extravaganzas! On the other hand, having some enemy fisherman get all up in your business just doesn’t sound like fun (though it *would* give me a good use for my leftover snowballs from Winter Veil!).
Anyway, I thought I’d share a small fishing tip that some people might find handy. Whenever I’m going to be fishing for any significant amount of time, I go into my interface options, and check the box for having loot windows open at your mouse location. It saves a lot of time, not having to move your cursor all the way over to the left each time to grab your latest aquatic treasures (especially if you have casting-yo’-line bound to a key).
I suppose if you were *really* in a hurry, like in the competition, you could also just set it to auto-loot. But generally, I like to see what I’m getting each time, so I prefer the mouse location option. But I leave it set to open in the default manner (on the left) when I’m doing anything other than fishing, because I find it too distracting to have the windows pop up in odd locations normally.
Hope this is helpful!
March 26th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
@Pookies: I think I’d pull my hair out in fear of getting killed while trying to fish if I played on a PvP server. I’m happy to hear that the ganking is kept to a minimum!
@Jon: You know, after I wrote that I realized that it sounded a lot like some of the SPAM email I get …
@Ego: I should bring my combat pet, Mr. Phae for that reason. He wouldn’t even keep me in combat!
@Keredria: I’m glad to know that your frustration paid off. I wish they would make it a little more diplomatic. Maybe if you catch a certain number within a certain time period, you could win. But you know, that’s probably just my weaksauce showing again …
@Inwë: Thanks! And I definitely intend to keep fishing what with the new daily fishing quests in 2.4! They’re so much fun! =)
@Zackoria: You know I stopped fishing at around 200 when they nerfed it into uselessness. When they started adding actual useful foods to it once more, I picked it back up. I think the secret is to set aside some time with a book and just generally entertain yourself with something else while you work on levelling up. Of course, I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to level a second fisherwoman now!
@Horns: That’s so evil! But … somehow fitting for a Warlock. I didn’t see anyone at the last tournament doing that, but it’s not a terrible idea.
@Nasirah: I think it will hurt me in the long run as I think I was pretty good at spotting those pools even without the yellow dots. Oh well. The new fishing rewards are so much better than what you can get from the Extravaganza, I don’t know if I’ll try again.
@Dimitris: I think the idea is that you bring a lot of people to “pretend” to be fishing holes so that no one else comes to take them. They don’t actually pull up any fish, though, so you can run over there and fish full pools that no one else has touched. Seems pretty duplicitous to me, though. =(
@Tone: You make a good point about the competition being in direct contrast to the otherwise quiet nature of fishing! And great tip about the mouse cursor. FishingAce actually sets your UI to auto-loot whenever your fishing pole is equipped, so I don’t need to toggle that option, but it does sound useful if I ever stop using it. Thanks!
March 26th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
> “FishingAce actually sets your UI to auto-loot whenever your fishing pole is equipped”
Wow, that sounds pretty nice. When I initially read the FishingAce description, I didn’t think it would appeal to me… but knowing this new tidbit, I may have to give it a try after all, and see if I can take my Fish Fu to the next level! Thanks!