Fishing: I'm Doin It Wrong.

So I've been trying to level it. I need to be able to catch these guys for cooking. I've been following guides, but I swear I'm doing it wrong. I've been using the suggested rods, the suggested bait, and fishing what is suggested in the suggested areas. It seems like the only fish that ever give me skillups are fish that are 20 or more levels above my fishing level. They are rare, but I have not received a single skillup trying to fish something within 5 levels of my fishing skill. Am I doin it wrong?

I need more information to give an answer.

What Rod?
What Bait?
Where are you fishing at?
What are you trying to catch?
Your fishing skill level?

Thanks

Fasl

in my personal experience with fishing it has alot to do with patience. Skills for me were slow. i used the guides and slowly i would get skill ups, not without frustration wondering why i wasnt skilling. So for me patience patience patience.

Hope that made sense^^ Good luck

I've experienced the same thing as Superunknown. Fishing skill ups for me are much slower then typical crafting skill ups at a similar range to cap. As I'm decidedly impatient, I've pretty much given up on it. ^^

This is just how fishing work but at certain level there will be some target that are way better for skill up. Sometime you will get good skill up on fish that are way far from your current level and sometimes you will get better skill up on fish that are close to your level. I remember getting two .3 on the same bastore bream(cap 86) when I was in the 20's using Pelican ring. After a few level they stopped to give me good skill up. In the second half of the 40's shall shell are pretty good skill up and they cap at 53. As they said, patience.

Try to get a Pelican Ring, it won't do miracle but you can get skill up where you would have not get one or you can get double skill up on the same fish.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Pelican_Ring

Happy fishing!

This is basically the PM I sent to Fasl, but maybe others can help me with my problem:

I've been using a Halcyon Rod and mostly Little Worms, sometimes using Carp Slices in Windy. My main objective has been Moat Carp in Basty Markets/Windy and Crayfish in the N. Gusta region. I have also done a good bit of this fishing in Windurst because I hear that Windy has a better chance of allowing you to fish up exclusively Moat Carp and nothing else. I have a good idea now of how to watch the rod and tell if its either of those so I have not had much trouble actually catching them.. BUT oddly enough, no skillups on them, but I have received much faster skillups on Yellow Globes in Qufim, Tricolored Carp, and other random fish I've been fishing for crafting purposes but MOST of these fish are more than 15 levels above my fishing skill. Is it my rod? Its suggested to work on both of these fish on the guides. Guides say to fish Moat carp and Crayfish until level 11... any ideas?

I fished moat carps in knightswell in ronfaure, with insect paste to lvl 11 on my fishing char, and im going to continue fishing them until i get lu shang's before i move on after 11.

level of cap on some fish is very deceiving. As said before if you are catching fish for cooking, carry ingredients for insect paste and head to Knightwell in west ronfaure and catch moat carps. You will "almost" exclusively catch moat carp and can turn them in toward getting Lu shangs rod. And Halcyon rod is best for small fish if you dont have Lu shang.

I saved up for my lu shangs, and then just went and fished up stuff that I could make money on. That way the slow skill ups didn't bother me as much, because I was at least making some money while doing it.

First -- 0-20 where the hardest skill up levels for fishing. I've done it three times now and the skill up rate sucks. I had an easier time getting from 95 to 100 than I did getting from 5 to 10. But, if you can make it to 20 or 25, and not get fed up with it, you'll probably do well later on.

Don't waste your gil or time on a Lu Shangs just yet. It would suck to fish up 10,000 carp or buy them (or the rod) and find out you don't like fishing later on. Hayclon works just fine; I used it until ~45 fishing and never once broke it. Once you hit mid 40's or so, it becomes more and more appropriate to fish with a Lu. If you stick it out until then and like fishing -- by all means buy a Lu.

-- Side note on Lu: It is much faster to fish 'gil' fish and either buy the Lu or buy the carp than it is to fish the carp straight up. Usually because RMT fishbot like hell and would rather lower the price of the rod just to sell it and the gil before the STF bans them. It only takes me 3-4 weeks max to make 2M gil (what Lu current goes for) -- it takes a few months at least to fish up 10,000 carp if you fish to the ~200 cap every day (which in itself, will take you 3-5 hours a day). 10,000/200 = 50 (50 days of fishing 3-5 hours a day ... yummy sounds fun eh?). Anyways, if you have THF or even THF sub, just go kill beastmen for a few hours, npc/desynth everything they drop to make gil to buy the Lu (that's what I did a lot of).

-- Back on skill up subject

Bait, rod, etc have nothing to do with skill ups rates. Don't believe those who say it does. Same goes with day, weather, using elemental staves which lots of people on these forums see to like to start rumors about.

I've been fishing almost 4 years now on and off, and just got 100 in November or so. Fishing skills up more like a weapon skills up than it does like another craft. The further you go above your cap, the more often and larger amounts of skill up you get. The downside of that is you are more likly to catch fish at or below your current level than you are fish above your level (anti-fish bot update a while ago). i.e., if you level 30 fishing and you are fishing in a spot with a lvl 24, lvl 56 and lvl 92 fish -- you are more than likely going to 'hook' mostly the lvl 24's. With a few 56's and even fewer 92's.

If you have ever gone out to skill up a weapon on a lvl 75 job but the weapon skill level is say 20 (and caps at 256). If you try to go straight to the mobs which cap at 256, you will have a very hard time landing hits and hitting above 0. Same with fishing sorta. The lower level mobs you try, the better your chances with landing a hit (hooking the fish) and hitting above 0 (reeling it in) become.

But alas, as with weapon skill up, if you were to try to skill on a mob that caps a few levels above your weapon, your skill ups are very slow and very small amounts. If you aim ~30 levels higher, they pick up a bit.

I always aimed for fish at least 15 levels above my current level. Even at 90 fishing I fished up the two Ebisu fish (Gugrusaurus and Lik) for skill ups; both fish are rumored to be well above 100 cap because they give lots of skill ups for the amount you catch. At level 5 fishing, I would aim for at least 15 or 20 cap fish. Go get on the ferry and fish up nebs. Once you get to near 20 you can start pulling up almost anything that bites. I was able to land noble lady pretty easily at 20 fishing. However, I found shall shells much better for skill ups 20+.

Also, if you can catch their registration window, sign up for www.titanictus.com forums. Much better than here, wiki, KI, alla for fishing.

Thank you for the pointers! Bekisa, you have cleared up a lot of confusion about fishing too. I think I'll just try out globes a little more and see if those will work better.

Fishing is one of those things where as people have mentioned you need alot of patience and I mean alot if you are serious about it. I dedicate all my time to fishing and when I fatigue I will go craft something else. My advice to you is if you are fishing for skillups and get bored in an area try somewhere else for a change of scenery. There are alot of nice sceneries in the game.

I have a pelican ring I have been using and sitll notice skillup as being slow with it. I enjoy fishing so itll lvl up when it does. :)

The cheapest place to fish up moat is the lake in East Sarutabaruta. You can use little worms because there aren't any crayfish in the lake. Much cheaper en masse than using insect paste. You'll occasionally fish up a Monke-Onke too, even at low levels.

lil' late to the party, but fishing in Rabao can give you Moats, or if you get bored of Moats, can fish Sandfish for a pretty decent profit.

Halycon+Insect Ball at the little underground ponds in Yhoator Jungle. You will be able to skillup off of Forest Carp until Lv21 and will accumulate ALOT of carp for the Lu' Shangs quest.

Rather than start a new fishing topic I thought I'd post here. coz im also "doing it wrong" I think.

Fishing just confuse me. everytime it says "you have a good feeling about this one" the rod goes all over the place and its nearly impossible to reel in. While when it says "you are fairly sure you dont have enough skill to reel this in" its crazy easy.

I "restarted" fishing yesterday, it had been lv 12 for a very long time.

First I spent approx 3 hours in jugner fishing for cheval salmon, 3 hours gave about 0.7 skillup. Changed location to East Ronfaure targeted the same fish, at both places I used Composite Fishing rod with fly lure.

Today I went to Mhaura and targeted yellow globes using Halcyon rod with worm lure, more skillups but still very rare. Got fishing to lv 15 on these.

Went back to East Ronfaure using Halcyon with sinking minnow, thought I'd get better skillups from cheval salmons now, however im getting more of shining trout than the salmons, and even though trouts cap at lv 37 (according to wiki) and salmon at lv 21, the trouts seems to be alot easier to reel up than the salmons. But still no skill up, only 0.2 in 2.5 hour.

So, should I keep reeling up the trouts that caps higher, or change to fly lure and target salmons only? ot go back to yellow globes?

The yellow globes were extremely easy to reel up 2-3 at the time, but also didnt get much of skill ups. still atleast they sell at AH.

Fishing = Confusing

This is kinda what I have been going after. http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Fishing_for_Fun_and_Profit_by_Ctownwoody#12-21

http://www.finalfishing.info/Guide.aspx

this guide did wonders for me. it explains the messeges that you get for fishing also.

best place for moat carp is knights well. get paste and you can hit anywhere from a good 80-100% bite rate depending on moonphase or at least tahts what my mules get.
As far as guides go if you pulling in the fish you doing it right skillups are just slow in fishing even with pelican ring. Really best skills about 10-15 lvls away.
Generally speaking w/o pelican youll be lucky to get a full 2 lvls a day ie 200 fishing fatigue cap with maybe 1-4

Hmm. ok. I'm not really intrested in moat carps though. 10 k carps is a bit too much, would be faster to just farm money to buy lu shangs if i think i need it later.

actually faster then youd think. usually takes me 2-4 hours to fish 200 fish on a mule... ok maybe taht is slow but its mindless and you figure at 3k a stack thats only 50k worth fish but only so much show up on ah. Ive gotten 3 lu shangs now and usually what i do is fish on my 2 lvl 20 mules and use the money to buy more

true, but if im gonna fish 200 carps on a couple of mules every day, and at the same time try to fish for skill ups on main char. that kinda sounds like alot of fishing lol. main reason i want to lv fishing is so i eventually can fish up my own fish for sushi and stuff ^^ seems to be the only (not only but 1 of the few good ones) way to make a decent profit of my cooking

11-17 Yellow Globes in Qufim Island. Halcyon Rod + Sabiki Rig at the pond.

All !!! are monsters, so cancel those.

If you're planning to fish for fish for cooking...well, you're gonna want a Lu Shang's sooner rather than later. Your main rods are pretty much Halcyon, Composite and Lu Shang til 100 fishing.

For Gigant Squid you have three options, w/o rod break: Composite, Lu Shang, Ebisu.

For Black Sole: Composite, Halcyon, Lu Shang, Ebisu.

Composite/Halcyon are synthetic rods, so they are slower than Lu Shang and Ebisu.

Should also note, if you fish 200 carps a day(lets say its on your main character, since mules will only be able to pull up 10 if they're under LV20).

200 carp/day

30 Days: 6000 carp traded in.

20 more days: 4000 more carp traded in.

6000 + 4000 = 10,000.

That's Lu Shang's in less than two months, IF you have the time to fish 200 carp a day. Its really not that bad.

Working on a Lu Shangs will be very beneficial in the long run, though you should note a lot of the 90-100 cap fish can break it, so once that high you gotta be careful about what you skill on.

In the end, if you have a Lu's, you basically need no other rod. If by 100 you're super serious about fishing, you can go ahead and make 95k GP for serpent rumors and try to start Ebisu, but right now, for what you wanna do, I'd say just go for Lu's.

Back to the point though...

I did;

11-17 Qufim Pond, Halcyon + Sabiki Rig.

17-current level Mhaura/Selbina Ferry(both ways) Halcyon Rod + Shrimp Lure. Nebimonites, can get some Noble Lady too.

&

Lower Jeuno Halcyon Rod + Shrimp Lure. Tiger Cod + Nosteau Herring. (Qufim works too for these. I prefer lower jeuno because no monsters.)

You'll wanna take part in the fishing contest to get a Pelican Ring, and around 30 should do Inside the Belly -> Pirate's Chart Quest to get an Albatross.

You can get pretty damn high only on the ferry, or only on Qufim Island, really.

Bite rate on sole and squid are pretty icky. I can make much better money just npcing the eastern fish in nashmau... though i probably need to find a better npc fish that SE hasnt nuked yet... well that and get ebisus... damn you zaldon!!!

I did some math on the whole lu shang quest.

fish up 10 k moat carp and sell them at ah for 4k stack gives you about 3.3 mil.

Trade the 10 k moat carps for the quest gives about 120 k gil and the rod.

Lu shang is about 2.5 mil on my server. so doing the quest rather than just selling the fish and buy the rod you'll lose about 800k.

Yeah in that case its better to sell the carps and buy the rod. >.> Over here its 4k/stack for Moats, but Lu's sells for 3.3M-4M, so I'm just doing the quest. ^-^ Gives me something to do in the meantime, though.

If you are still having problems with skill ups, I'd suggest This Guide for fishing. I've found it very useful so far. ^^

Just got initiate and moved to nebimonites. getting decent skillups and decent profit atm :D bite rate seems to be good on the mhaura-selbina with crayfish paste ^^

Umm... so yeah. Pelican Ring. I decided to get me one of these, seemed to be easy, since even if you end up last you'd get the ring right? so NPC at the fishing guild in selbina asks for a Cave Cherax, according to ffxiclopedia its a cap 100 fish and you need Ebisu Fishing Rod or lu shang, so how fair is that? They always ask for such impossible fishes?

Well...at least you can buy the fish. >>;

Here its Three-Eyed Fish atm, which isn't bad. :s

You're gonna have to find a 100 Fisher to get you a Cave Cherax, or find one on AH. ; ;

so its a yes then? its all those stupid fishes? need to be lv 100 to get an item that is useful in low lvs? last time a Cave Cherax sold at ah on this server was 2 years ago lol

Pretty much. >.> This Link has a list of fish...a lot of them are used in fish ranking. Not all, but a lot of them. :s

The lowest possible level fish is 31 (Giant Catfish). So pretty much you need a good fishing buddy, or some $$ to spend finding a fish.

I got a Wiki-based minimum weight fish off the AH (2nd or 3rd buy) but obviously it can be a lot more gil-consuming than that.