Tippy

Fishing lets players catch fish from fishing spots.It is the companion skill of Cooking. Caught fish may be cooked using the Cooking Skill, and are often sold to other players because of their ability to heal Life Points. When a player has achieved level 99 in fishing he or she may purchase a Fishing Skillcape from the Master Fisher inside the Fishing Guild for 99,000 coins.

History

The fishing skill was released on 11 June 2001, along with Karamja and the Pirate's Treasure quest. It was part of a large update that complemented the cooking skill. This update added many of the fish that are currently found in free-to-play, including shrimp, salmon, and lobster. In addition to the fishing spots on Karamja, spots in Draynor Village and Port Sarim were added.
On 27 February 2002, a members subscription service was created. Along with many new quests and fishing areas, big net fishing was released, which allowed players to catch bass, mackerel, and cod. In addition, players would sometimes fish up a casket. On 17 June 2002, the Fishing Guild was released. The Fishing Trawler activity was released on 28 July 2003. It allowed players to fish for manta rays and sea turtles.
On 3 July 2007, Barbarian Fishing was added to the game. This included Heavy Rod Fishing and Barbarian Hand Fishing. Heavy Rod Fishing allows players to catch Leaping trout, Leaping salmon and Leaping sturgeon. Barbarian Hand Fishing gives the ability to fish using bare hands, as opposed to using a harpoon.
On 17 September 2009, the fishing skill was updated drastically by the release of the Living Rock Caverns. Players could fish for cavefish and rocktail, two of the highest-healing fish in the game. Fish Flingers, the first fishing distraction and diversion, was released on 23 March 2010. Less than a month later, Dungeoneering was introduced, which released ten more different kinds of fish only caught in Daemonheim.

Fishing Supplies

Locations of fishing shops where players can buy supplies are:

Free-to-play

Gerrant's Fishy Business in Port Sarim
Hank's Fishing Shop in Lumbridge

Members

Harry's Fishing Shop in Catherby
Fishing Guild Shop - only Fishing bait and Feathers
Shilo Village Fishing Shop
Witchaven Fishing Shop
Fish stalls - Fishmongers
Rellekka Fremennik Fishmonger
Miscellania Island Fishmonger
Etceteria Fishmonger

Equipment

Players need certain types of equipment depending on what fish they want to catch.

Net Fishing/Crayfish cage

The first few fish players can catch require nets, except for crayfish, which require a crayfish cage. Fishing nets can only be used in the seas. Free players can only use small fishing nets while members can also use big fishing nets. The big nets allow players to catch different, higher-level fish and sometimes items such as boots, seaweed, or caskets. When a player has found a fishing spot, they can then use their net if the option 'net fishing spot' is available.

Fishing rods and bait fishing

Fishing rods are required to fish for many mid-level fish. Fishing rods can be used in both rivers and seas. Along with a fishing rod, players also need fishing bait (or living minerals if they fish rocktail) to attract fish. Bait can be bought in stores (3gp each at Port Sarim fishing shop), but they can also be obtained by some monsters and random events. When a player has found a fishing spot, they can then use their fishing rod if the option 'bait fishing spot' is available. For every fish you catch, you lose one piece of bait. They are used to catch lots of different fish, including sardines, herring, pike and more.
There is also another type of rod, the oily fishing rod. However, only members can use this rod. It is required to fish lava eels and is needed in the Heroes Quest.
Another rod is the barbarian rod, which is used to catch leaping trout, leaping salmon, and leaping sturgeon, during and after Barbarian training.

Fly fishing rods and feathers - Lure fishing

Fly fishing is also required to fish for certain mid-level fish, which are caught in rivers. Along with a fly fishing rod, players also need feathers to attract fish. Feathers can be bought in on the Grand Exchange for 19 coins each. If a player wishes to get the feathers cheap they are sold in fishing stores at a price of 6gp each. However each fishing store only has 1000 feathers at a time. Feathers are also often dropped by chickens and occasionally chompy birds. When a player has found a fishing spot, they can then use their fly fishing rod if the option 'lure fishing spot' is available. Each fish caught uses one feather. You can also use orange feathers or any other coloured feathers from hunting to Fly fish Salmon and Trout.
Stripy feathers (introduced with the Hunter skill) can be used for fly fishing and they work the same as normal feathers. However with stripy feathers players will only be able to fishrainbow fish, rather than the usual trout and salmon. If you have both types of feathers in your inventory, you will be asked which feathers you would like to use.
Fly Fishing in places like Shilo Village or Gunnarsgrunn is thought of as the quickest possible fishing experience.

Harpoons

Harpoons are required for catching some larger medium to high level fish: Mainly Tuna, Swordfish and Sharks. They can only be used in the sea. When a player has found a fishing spot, they can then use their harpoon if the option Harpoon Fishing spot is available.
The ratio of Tuna to Swordfish when catching these with a harpoon is approximately 5:4. Catching 10,000 tuna will get you about 8,000 swordfish.
There are three types of harpoons - the (regular) harpoon, the barb-tail harpoon, and the Sacred clay harpoon. The barb-tail harpoon and Sacred clay harpoon can be wielded; the (regular) harpoon cannot. Many players prefer the barb-tail harpoon or sacred clay harpoon, as one saves an inventory slot. The Sacred clay harpoon gives double the experience per fish in addition to being wieldable.
After being taught by Otto Godblessed, a player can catch fish that are harpoon-able with their bare hands. Levels required are 20 levels higher and they also require a Strength level; but doing so grants very little Strength experience and saves an inventory slot compared to having a non-wieldable harpoon. It is exactly the same rate of fish as just normal harpooning.
Swordfish and Shark gloves will increase the Experience gained by 100 per catch. They can be bought at Fist of Guthix for 200 tokens. Tuna catches will not affect the gloves' charges.

Cages

Lobsters are caught in the sea, using lobster pots. When a player has found a fishing spot, they can then use their lobster cage if the option 'cage fishing spot' is available. Lobster is highly recommended for fishing levels 60 to 99 for non-members. (Note: Keep in mind, lobsters take a bit longer to fish than other fish!) A popular cage spot is in Karamja. This is due to Stiles, who changes tuna, swordfish or lobster into notes (both raw and cooked), being just south of the Karamja volcano.

Barbarian Fishing

Members with a high level in fishing can speak with Otto Godblessed in his home near Baxtorian Falls to learn special barbarian methods of fishing. First, he instructs the player on heavy rod fishing. Heavy rod fishing requires a Barbarian rod (found under Otto's bed) and any type of bait, as well as a knife to gut the fish. In order to catch the special fish in Otto's lake, a Strength and Agility level is needed in addition to the fishing requirement. The Leaping fish obtained can be used with a knife to obtain roe and caviar for use in Herblore skill, and catching them gives small amounts of experience in strength and agility. The fish you catch this way are as follows:

Fish	Fishing Level Required	Strength/Agility Level Required	Fishing experience gained	Strength/Agility experience gained	Cooking Experience from successful cutting/gutting
Leaping trout	48	15	50	5	10
Leaping salmon	58	30	70	6	10
Leaping sturgeon	70	45	80	7	15

After this, the player can learn how to fish Tuna, Swordfish, and Sharks without a harpoon. Using this method requires a higher fishing level as well as a strength level equivalent to the fishing level needed to catch the fish normally. However, it provides small amounts of Strength experience.
Note: When you are catching swordfish via barbarian methods, you will still receive tuna along with swordfish if you have the required levels for both.

A player Fishing Shark with his bare hands in the Fishing Guild.

Fish	Fishing Level Required	Strength Level Required	Fishing experience gained	Strength experience gained
Tuna	55	35	80	8
Swordfish	70	50	100	10
Shark	96	76	110	11
Baron Shark*	96	76	110	11

*Juju Fishing Potion required.

Tips

When heavy rod fishing, you should bring your rod, your knife, and 25 fishing bait or feathers, go to the fishing spots and catch a full inventory of fish and cut them into fish offcuts and caviar/roe. If your inventory gets full of offcuts and roe/caviar, drop the fish offcuts and continue fishing/cutting using the caviar/roe. You can pick up the offcuts after you have used up the caviar/roe as they are also bait. Dropping the caviar/roe takes more time to drop than the stackable offcuts. This gets you around 50 to 60k an hour at 70 fishing. Note that it is possible to run out of bait just from cutting open the fish so bring some back up bait/feathers to be on the safe side. When fishing with Bait, feathers, offcuts and caviar/roe in your inventory you will use the bait first, then the feathers, then the offcuts, then the caviar/roe. If you are banking the caviar/roe for barbarian potions it is a good idea to take plenty of bait/feathers to start with and bank the fish offcuts with the caviar/roe. This way you can save the offcuts for later barbarian fishing trips so that you won't have to bother using other bait or feathers.

Fishing spots

There are 5 main types of fishing spots in RuneScape: Net/Bait, Lure/Bait, Cage/Harpoon, and Net/Harpoon (members-only) and Harpoon/Net (after Swan Song, members-only). Net/Bait spots require a small fishing net to net fish whilst Net/Harpoon spots require a big fishing net to net fish. Harpoon/Net requires a small Fishing net.

Fishing Trawler

Fishing Trawler is a fishing activity run by Murphy that players can play at Port Khazard. Players need at least a minimum of level 15 fishing to participate. Players board a trawler boat and work as a team to prevent the boat from sinking as they are sailed for 12 minutes around the sea. It can be overwhelming for a single player, so it is recommended to bring friends, a clan, or other experienced fishers. Fishing Trawler was released 28 July 2003. Currently, world 116 is the RuneScape designated Trawler world. At the end of every trip, you get a load of fish and other assorted items (i.e. rusty swords) the Fishing Trawler is the only event to give Raw sea turtles and Manta rays.

Fish Flingers

Fish Flingers is a Distraction and Diversion released 23 March 2010. Games are scheduled every 90 minutes and last for 15 minutes. Fishermen appear in the most popular fishing spots five minutes before each game and can teleport players to the game location. Games are a solo, non-competitive activity, although players frequently cooperate. Rewards are experience, fish, and tackle boxes. Players can ask the Fisherman's wife about the game schedule or check their tackle boxes, if they have one.

Fishing and Summoning

The members-only Summoning skill provides some very useful benefits to fishing, in particular when fishing sharks or monkfish. Familiars are indispensable because they can forage fish for you on their own while you fish. Not only does this give you additional fish to sell or cook, but you will gain a portion of the experience for each catch! Plus, they'll give your fishing an invisible boost that improves your catch rate slightly. There are three familiars that help with fishing.

Familiar	Summoning level	Fishing boost	Forages
Granite Crab	16	+1	Oysters, cod, seaweed, and pike
Ibis	56	+3	Swordfish and tuna
Granite lobster	74	+4	Sharks and swordfish

Note: While fishing for salmon and trout in Shilo Village, monkfish at the Piscatoris Fishing Colony, sharks at Burgh de Rott, or rocktail at the Living Rock Caverns, an ibis produces only swordfish. A granite lobster produces sharks at Shilo Village.

Fishing and Agility

The message a player receives when they manage to catch two fish simultaneously.

As of the 19 January 2010 update, there is a chance of receiving bonus tuna, swordfish, and shark when players have a high enough Agility level. The chance of getting a bonus fish increases as Agility increases, up to a limit where the chances do not continue to increase (shown in the table below). For example, at 70 Agility, players have achieved the maximum chance of catching two tunas at one time. At 71, there is no increased chance than at 70. The bonus applies to barehanded fishing, as well. Players do not receive additional experience for gaining bonus fish.

Fish	Fishing Level	Agility Level	Agility Level (Upper Limit)
Tuna	35	35	70
Swordfish	50	50	?
Shark	76	76	?

Types of fish

There is a large variety of fish that can be caught. When a player catches a fish, it will be raw and cannot be eaten but can be fed to certain pet's, such as cats or kittens until it is cooked. The name and colour indicates this. For example, when shrimps are first caught they are called "raw shrimp", but once cooked the name changes to "shrimp".

Making money

Every player needs food to heal, thus making fish a market in massive demand. It is recommended that players do not sell their fish to general stores or fish stores, but instead sell them to other players. The Grand Exchange or the RuneScape Forums are the best places to sell fish.

Raw fish tend to fetch higher prices than cooked fish, due to the high demand of players who want to train cooking. Therefore, it is recommended you leave your fish raw if you want to gain maximum profit.

The fish most commonly caught for profit are lobsters (less commonly now as the prices have crashed due to massive amounts of lobsters being sold at min price) and swordfish for free players, and sharks and monkfish for members. Since the new update, fishing Rocktail and Cavefish is also very profitable and also much better experience than the commonly fished sharks.

A list of prices for raw and cooked fish can be found at the Grand Exchange Market Watch.

For some advice on making money through fishing, see the fishing section of the Money making guide.

Random events

Random events are events that happen at random times. They were introduced to stop macros - people who use a program to play automatically. Some random events include non-player characters wanting players to do a task for them and rewarding them if they are successful or a monster that will attack the player. While fishing, players may encounter random events which are specific to Fishing, listed below. Note that due to the Random Event Update it is not possible to get random events other than Evil Bob's Island (other events below were retired).

River troll (Moved)

While fishing, a river troll may appear and will start attacking a player. They can deal a large amount of damage and their combat level depends on the player, though it will always be higher. The level ranges from level 14 to level 159. Players can either run away from them or fight them. River trolls have meager drops consisting of items related to Fishing, such as 1 raw fish of any kind or 1-5 bait. The river troll currently resides in the Enchanted valley (Fairy code B-K-Q).

Whirlpool (Discontinued)

A whirlpool.

While fishing, a whirlpool may appear in a fishing spot. If a player continues to fish in the whirlpool, their fishing equipment may be taken by it and will not be returned. Players are strongly advised to stop fishing when one appears and wait until it disappears, which usually takes about 30 seconds. The whirlpool is shown in the mini-map with a yellow dot, like an NPC.

Big fish (Discontinued)

While fishing, a big fish may appear in a fishing spot and steal a player's fishing equipment and spit it somewhere nearby, usually 3 to 10 squares away. The player has the usual amount of time as if they had dropped it to find their equipment before anyone else sees it and grabs it. When the player has found the equipment, they can go back to fishing. The big fish causes fishing spots to move as well. This event will not occur when a player is using their hands to fish. This random event was discontinued as part of the 5/02/09 Random Event Update.

Evil Bob

While fishing (or casting spells), players may be transported to ScapeRune, the dominion of Evil Bob, where everything is the opposite of RuneScape. Although due to an update you can get random events while not doing something related to that skill. To escape, players must catch a cooked fish using a small fishing net (several spawn on the beach - but vanish from the inventory after the event), uncook the caught fish on a fire, and give it to Evil Bob. After eating the fish (if players feed Evil Bob a cooked fish, they must feed him another uncooked fish for every cooked fish they fed him to get him to fall asleep), Evil Bob falls asleep and the player can enter portal next to Evil Bob to return. The player receives a random event gift.

Temporary boosts

A player wearing a Fishing Cape (t) and performing the Skillcape emote.

The following temporary boosts are visible on the stats tab. They will affect what a player can catch, provided there is something new to catch at or before that level.

Fishing potion, made using the Herblore skill, temporarily increases Fishing by 3.
Fish pie, made using the Cooking skill, temporarily increases Fishing by 3.
Admiral pie, made using the Cooking skill, temporarily increases Fishing by 5.
A brown spicy stew can raise fishing temporarily by up to 6; however, it can also decrease it by up to 6.
The Fishing Cape of Achievement can be operated to increase Fishing from 99 to 100.

The following temporary boosts are invisible, meaning they do not appear on the stats tab. They will not affect what a player can catch, only the rate at which they would catch fish.

Granite crab, a summoning familiar, invisibly increases Fishing by 1.
Ibis, a summoning familiar, invisibly increases Fishing by 3.
Granite lobster, a summoning familiar, invisibly increases Fishing by 4.

Quests that give fishing experience

Quest Name	Fishing XP Reward	Other XP Reward	Quest Points
Recipe for Disaster	1000	-	1
Fishing Contest	2437	-	1
The Fremennik Trials	2812.4	2812.4 Agility Experience 2812.4 Attack Experience 2812.4 Crafting Experience 2812.4 Defence Experience 2812.4 Fletching Experience 2812.4 Constitution Experience 2812.4 Strength Experience 2812.4 Thieving Experience 2812.4 Woodcutting Experience	3
Land of the Goblins	3000	3,000 Agility Experience 3,000 Herblore Experience 3,000 Thieving Experience 3,000 Strength Experience 2,000 Prayer Experience	1
Tai Bwo Wannai Trio	5000	-	2
Rum Deal	7000	7000 Farming Experience 7000 Prayer Experience	2
Sea Slug Quest	7175	-	1
Swan Song	10000	15,000 Magic Experience 10,000 Prayer Experience	2
Deadliest Catch	70,000	26,000 Hunter experience 9,000 Thieving experience	1
Total	108424.4		14

Trivia

Fishing spots of any type are considered NPCs instead of objects in the game engine, like Lava Splashes.
If you right-click on a fishing spot, which then moves before you click to fish at it, you will run to its new location and begin fishing. This also works if you start fishing, open an interface, and if the fishing spot moves, you go to the new location.
The Display pictures for Tuna, Swordfish and Shark under the strength Barbarian Displays were at one point different than the normal item displays under fishing.
The Stealing Creation harpoon is slower than other harpooning methods, but gives double the experience, making the xp/hr much less than one might expect.
There is a glitch where you are fishing then you try to cook an uncookable item, it will appear you are fishing on land.