Leveling Fishing Skill

"Just go to the water and fish" ... is not the right answer.

A common question I am seeing people ask is "What is the best way to level my fishing skill?" and some guy named Chad will be the first to answer with something along the lines of "Just go to the water and fish ...". This lackluster response is actually wrong, that is not the fastest, or the most yield efficient way to fish, therefore it can not be the best way to level fishing experience.

When you look at the numbers, fishing on just this is actually a lot slower and you're also going to get about 90 - 95% common fish. This chapter will explain what all goes into it, and how to maximize it for both speed or yield.

What is the point of leveling fishing?

There are two main reasons to level your fishing skill, the main being that you unlock the ability to discover different hotspots across the map. The other reason is because it increases your maximum cast distance. As mentioned in previous chapters, maximum cast distance makes the tension mini-game much easier. We always want to be aiming for max distance. So as you level fishing, it actually becomes easier to reel in fish, and you get easier access to rarer fish. Leveling your Fishing Skill is a grind, but it is also a decent long term investment.

Fastest Way to Level Fishing Skill

If you are looking for the fastest way, and don't care about what you catch then the goal is to maximize your experience gain per hour. Here is what I suggest ...

What you will want to do is find a nice cozy two star fishing hotspot. When the hotspot is up, fish in it, when it is down, keep fishing in the same water. Make sure you are using rarity boosting baits and equip any gear you have that can affect rarity or size. Now just stay there, and keep fishing ...

Before we can understand what actually makes the two star hotspot the way to go we have to first understand how we gain fishing experience. There are two factors that effect the amount of experience you will earn. Fish Size and Rarity. Our goal to make leveling fishing the fastest requires us to maximize both of these variables. Since we are measuring over time, we can consider time to catch a fish, another variable we can work with. Using these variables we should be able to find an ideal fishing location.

So why the two star hotspots for speed, why not three star or one star?

It all comes down to the numbers. Three star Secret hotspots only have 8 - 10 rare fish in them, then take about 40 minutes to respawn. Rare hotspots have 15 - 25 fish in them, uncommon quality and up, and take about 30 minutes to respawn. The deviation in minimum to maximum experience for rarity is also minimized with uncommon, this reduction means you will have a lot less volatility to your experience gains vs a three star hotspot or one star hot spot.

Let's say you spend 5 hours doing this strategy at each size of hotspot. At a secret hotspot you will average about 8 pool respawns in this time. This comes out to 64 to 80 rare items, with an average of 175 experience gained per rare item you are going to see between 11.2k to 16k experience from just the hotspot when it is up.

Now for the same amount of time spent at a rare hotspot you will have approximately 10 hotspot pool respawns. From these 10 pools you will pull in between 150 to 250 items, about 70% of these will be uncommon, the rest will be rare. If you are lucky a legendary or two, but let's ignore the legendaries for now since we can't depend on them, consider them a cherry on top.

When you add it all up you find that you are looking at between 105 and 175 uncommon, and between 45 and 75 rare fish from a two star hotspot. This gives us an experience range of 24.3k to 39.3k over the course of 5 hours and there is a good chance we walk away with the same amount of rare fish.

Now downtime, when the hotspot pool isn't there let's say you are averaging 220 experience per minute. A secret hotspot will take you about 5 minutes to empty out, this plus the respawn time means a cycle is about 45 minutes. During our 5 hour shift we will have 266 minutes of downtime fishing. This comes out to 58.6k experience gained during downtime fishing at a secret hotspot. Using this same formula we end up with 49.5k experience gained during rare hotspot downtime.

All said and done over the course of 5 hours fishing at a secret hotspot will get you between 69.8k to 74k, or 232 to 246 experience per minute. Same math but with a rare hotspot will get you between 73.8k to 88.8k, 246 to 296 experience per minute.

Your absolute best case scenario for fishing at a secret hotspot will level you at the same rate of your absolute worst case scenario fishing at a two star hotspot. Fishing at a two star hotspot can be between 6 and 17% more efficient for speed vs at three star hotspot.

Now let's compare this to our opening statement, that fishing anywhere is how you do it ... I am going to be nice and assume Chad also told you to use bait. So you're looking at about 66k experience total at about 220 experience per minute in open waters. 90 to 95% of which are going to be common fish. The rest will be mostly uncommon fish and a couple rare fish.

My way is about 10 - 25% more effective per hour time wise, and yield wise you are going to walk away many multiplies over in value of fish caught. Im summary, stick to the hotspots!

By Best I mean most profitable, I don't care about how long it takes ...

I suggest just bouncing from hotspot to hotspot then, if time is not a factor then enjoy it, get out there and explore. Maybe make yourself a circle between a few hotspots you really like. Obviously fishing in three star hotspots is going to be better than two stars as you will get only rare and up in Secret Hotspots. But they do have a limited supply, and will be popular. By focusing on rarity and size you will end up with bigger and better yields. You can effectively turn a 2 star hotspot into a 2.5 star hotspot if you do everything I've taught you in this article.