Ironman Guide/Fishing

Ironman Guide

Fishing is most often trained through "powerfishing", where the caught fish are dropped rather than banked. While the skill is classically a good source of food for combat training, the required time investment to catch and cook fish makes it less useful for Ironman players when compared to buyable food (such as cooked karambwans, jugs of wine, and potatoes with cheese) or Saradomin brews. At high Fishing levels, it is possible to get large amounts of raw sharks from fishing minnows, which can be a solid food choice once cooked.

Early training: Quests

Main article: Quest experience rewards § Fishing

A number of early quests reward significant amounts of Fishing experience, making it possible to skip slow, low-level training methods and get straight to fly fishing. The most notable of these quests is Sea Slug, which has minimal requirements and gives enough experience to get to level 24 Fishing alone. Completing all of the following four quests gives enough experience to get level 31 Fishing.

• Recipe for Disaster (Pirate Pete subquest) requires Cook's Assistant, 31 , rewards 1,000 Fishing experience
• Fishing Contest requires 10 , rewards 2,437 Fishing experience
• Tai Bwo Wannai Trio requires Jungle Potion, 5 , 15 , 30 , rewards 5,000 Fishing experience
• Sea Slug requires 30 , rewards 7,175 Fishing experience

Fastest experience

Levels 20–58: Fly fishing

From level 20 to level 58 Fishing, fly fishing is the fastest way to train the skill. This requires a fly fishing rod and feathers, which can be bought in bulk from various fishing shops. Experience rates have a notable increase at level 30 Fishing, after which the player will start to catch raw salmon. Experience rates increase as the player's fishing level does, ranging from 20,000 to 35,000 Fishing experience per hour.

The fishing spots just east of the Barbarian Village have a perpetual fire near them, where the raw trout and salmon can be cooked before dropping them. This is a good way to combine early Fishing training with early Cooking training as well.

For more information, see Ironman Guide/Cooking.

Levels 58–99: Barbarian Fishing

3-tick Barbarian Fishing using the cut-eat method.

Barbarian Fishing is one of the fastest training methods in the game, and offers the fastest Fishing experience for most Ironman players. Even though Barbarian Fishing becomes available at level 48, fly fishing offers faster experience up to level 58. Using tick manipulation is strongly recommended, as this greatly increases experience rates.

Players must complete a portion of the Barbarian Training miniquest to be able to catch leaping fish. Having level 30 Agility and Strength is required for catching leaping salmon, and level 45 in both for leaping sturgeon. Players will also need suitable bait such as feathers and a barbarian rod obtained from Otto's Grotto. For tick manipulation players will also need certain items to create a 3-tick action, such as herb and tar or knife and teak/mahogany logs, and a knife should the player cut the fish.

Banking leaping sturgeon and caviar is beneficial for Herblore training, as it can be added to most completed potions for extra Herblore experience, cutting down on the amount of herb farming and secondary collecting needed for 99 Herblore.

If you do not plan to use caviar for Herblore, the best spot for Barbarian Fishing is at the pond next to the Otto's Grotto. Players can quickly get there by using a games necklace or Grouping teleport to Barbarian Assault and running south-west. When banking caviar, the lake at Mount Quidamortem can be used, as the fishing spots are very close to a bank.

The most basic method for 3-tick fishing is to drop the fish between catches. This can be done by starting the 3-tick cycle, dropping the fish using shift drop and clicking on the fishing spot. This requires accurate clicking and some practice to perform consistently, but it is more efficient than dropping a full inventory.

"Cut-eat" or "eat-cut" fishing (depending on the order) is a more advanced and slightly more click-intensive method. This is done by starting a 3-tick cycle with herb and tar, cutting the fish with a knife and eating the roe/caviar to tick manipulate. When you run out of roe/caviar to be eaten and fish to be cut, use herb and tar to continue the 3-tick cycle. The benefits of this method is that it provides some passive Cooking experience, it does not require players to drop fish (therefore Shift is unused), and it is slightly cheaper due to fish offcuts also being produced which are used as bait over feathers. However, it is less predictable due to randomness being involved, which may take time getting used to. It is also stricter with timing; if the cutting and eating is done too late, the cycle becomes offset. Having at least level 80 Cooking is recommended for 100% chance of successfully cutting leaping salmon and sturgeon if using this method.

Experience rates scale depending on the player's Fishing level and performance. When using tick manipulation, players can gain up to 65,000 Fishing experience per hour at level 58, 87,000 experience per hour at level 70, 95,000 experience per hour at level 80 and 102,000 experience per hour at level 90. At level 99, players can gain up to 110,000 experience per hour when wearing the angler's outfit.

Without tick manipulation the experience rates are a lot lower, but this method still offers the fastest AFK Fishing experience. Players can expect to gain around 25,000 experience per hour at level 48, increasing 35,000–42,000 experience per hour at levels 58–70, and 50,000–60,000 experience per hour from level 70 onwards, reaching up to 66,000 experience per hour at level 99.

For every 100,000 experience gained in Fishing, the player should expect about 9,000 experience gained in Agility and Strength.

Level	Fishing XP without 3-tick	Strength/Agility XP without 3-tick	Fishing XP with 3-tick	Strength/Agility XP with 3-Tick
48	20,000–25,000	2,000–2,500	32,000–40,000	3,200–4,000
58	35,000–42,000	3,500–4,200	56,000–67,200	5,600–6,720
70	45,000–55,000	4,500–5,500	72,000–88,000	7,200–8,800
80	50,000–60,000	5,000–6,000	80,000–96,000	8,000–9,600
90	50,000–63,750	5,000–6,375	80,000–102,000	8,000–10,200
99	65,000–71,750	6,500–7,000	104,000–114,800	10,400–11,480

Other methods

Level 35+: Tempoross

Main article: Tempoross

At level 35, players can challenge the Fishing boss, Tempoross. This method offers decent Fishing experience, Cooking experience, Construction experience, potential Strength experience, and rewards. When not cooking, Tempoross offers Fishing experience rates competitive with non-tick-manipulated Barbarian Fishing.

Tempoross' reward pool can also be beneficial to low levelled players, possibly rewarding raw fish, planks, the fish barrel and tackle box.

Solo Tempoross: 100,000 experience an hour

This method revolves around dealing 0 damage to Tempoross during his first attack phase and keeping his energy at 10% or below.

The mechanics are predictable so each kill follows a repeating cycle:

• Fish 25-26
• Dump all fish into the Ammunition crate
• Grab 5 buckets and fill them
• Clear fire (make sure to clear the fire on the boat before leaving)
• Drop buckets
• Fish 27
• Dump remaining fish
• Fish 27
• Dump 3 fish
• Attack Tempoross
• Dump remaining fish
• Colossal waves (Don't tether unless you still have fish while depositing)
• Fish 22-27 (This will vary depending on Tempoross's Essence but 24% should be low enough to deposit 27 fish)
• Dump remaining fish
• Kill Tempoross
• Grab bucket

Notes:

Prioritize leaping fishing spots.

The colossal wave special attack takes at least 6 seconds from the initial chat box message so don't be afraid to do actions in between before tethering.

A charged Infernal Harpoon will not work with this method.

Level 65+: Karambwans

This gives 41,000 Fishing experience per hour and 150,000 banked Cooking experience per hour.

Requirements: Access to the fairy rings system. Completion of Tai Bwo Wannai Trio quest.

Recommended: Rada's blessing, and a Fish barrel for more AFK time.

Travel to DKP with a fairy ring, fish an inventory full of karambwans, then bank them and return as quickly as you can. If you have a fairy ring in your player-owned house, the fastest method is to deposit using your servant. If you're not accessing fairy rings using your POH (e.g. via a quest point cape) the closest deposit box is the gem mine, which requires Karamja gloves 3. Some players choose to bank via the fairy ring, but this method is slower than those listed above. The nearest fairy ring to bank is located by the Chasm of Fire (DJR).

This method is very good when you need to AFK, but you're able to do something more click intensive than cutting redwood trees or participating in the Nightmare Zone.

Levels 71–99: 2-tick harpooning swordfish/tuna

2-tick harpooning on the shores of Piscarilius.

2-tick harpooning swordfish and tuna offers the fastest Fishing experience in the game. Tick manipulation must be used for this method, as without it the experience will be a lot slower and this method would not be worth doing over other methods. When using the crystal harpoon, it becomes slightly more efficient than 3-tick Barbarian Fishing. However, obtaining the crystal harpoon and training through 2-tick harpooning ends up being slower overall than training through Barbarian Fishing, which has much lower requirements.

For harpooning tuna and swordfish, a convenient method of doing this is fishing in Piscarilius with two rats attacking two ticks apart. After setting up the rats, the only clicking that must be done is clicking the fishing spot on the ticks that a hitsplat appears on the player character.

Players can gain up to 140,000 experience per hour at level 99 when using the crystal harpoon, or 125,000 experience per hour when using the dragon harpoon.

2-tick harpooning is also the fastest method on average of obtaining the heron pet.

Levels 82–99: Minnows

Main article: Minnow

This can be done at Kylie Minnow's fishing platform in the Fishing Guild, which requires level 82 Fishing, completion of the quest Fishing Contest, and having full angler's outfit to access. Minnows can be exchanged for noted raw sharks. The stackable nature of minnows, as well as the noted raw sharks that Kylie gives in exchange, makes this a good way of training fishing as well as a good source of food.

Minnow fishing spots move clockwise every 15 seconds. In addition, a fishing spot will occasionally spawn flying fish instead of providing minnows; flying fish will eat 20 minnow directly from the player's inventory as long as they keep fishing there, forcing them to move to another spot. A flying fish will only appear after a fishing spot has changed and will continue to eat the player's minnows until the fishing spot changes position once again.

Experience rates are shown in the table below. Wearing a Rada's blessing is recommended, as it increases minnows per hour by 2% per tier of diary completed.

Level	XP/h	Minnows/h		Sharks/h
		No blessing		No blessing
82	40,000	15,000	16,200	375	405
85	43,000	17,000	18,360	425	459
90	45,000	19,500	21,040	487	526
95	48,000	22,000	23,760	550	594
99	56,000	25,000	27,000	625	675