Fishing equipment

Fishing equipment
The only equipment required for fishing is a fishing pole. Unlike the other professions, you can boost your fishing skill considerably with equipment and lures.

Fishing lures
As you can see from the chart, the fishing lures give a much larger boost to fishing skill than any other gear. They are also low cost and readily available. They are an extremely cost effective way of boosting your fishing skill when you need to.

Fishing gloves
The enchantment creates a permanent profession skill bonus on a glove apparel item, which is then worn to apply the fishing skill bonus. Casting the enchantment on a very low level non-binding white or gray quality cloth glove enables the glove to be worn by any character. This will also prevent anyone from accidentally disenchanting the glove. (The materials for the enchantment cannot ever be recovered in any case.)

Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza gear
Any player can win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza and claim the as a reward, which grants +40 fishing (pre Patch 3.1 this was +35 fishing).
 * You can win the contest with 1 skill, but you cannot equip the Arcanite Fishing Pole until you have 300 base fishing skill.
 * A low level character fishing in Stranglethorn Vale's coastal waters will require assistance due to hostile mobs.
 * The competition for the is intense, and there are only 52 contest winners a year per server.
 * Note, too, that there are two very good prizes for winning the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza and you only get to choose one each time you win. There's not much point to winning more than twice per character, but the first time you win, you might want the.

The other fishing items from Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza are not competitive prizes. They are awarded in exchange for turning in rare fish that can be caught during the full two hours of competition, even after a winner of the competition has been declared, and there is no limit to the number that can be awarded (but the drop rate is very low). You can turn these rare fish in to the exchange NPC, Fishbot 5000, up to an hour after the competition ends (three hours after it started).

Kalu'k Fishing Derby
The Kalu'ak Fishing Derby is a fishing event—introduced in Patch 3.3—held every Saturday between 14:00 and 15:00 by the Kalu'ak. The objective is to be the first player to catch a Blacktip Shark, with the winner allowed to choose between a Dread Pirate Ring, and Boots of the Bay.

Fishing gear combinations
The highest achievable skill is to 792 (525 skill, +150 lure, +40 pole, +5 line, +5 hat, +5 boots, +2 gloves enchant, +10 lager, +50 underbelly elixir).

While 792 fishing is available, the most difficult fishing zone currently only requires a fishing skill of 675 to avoid junk casts. At 525 skill you only need an additional 150 points from items, enchants, and/or lures. This gives several different opportunities for players to get this maximum required amount:
 * Someone who has much of the best gear, doesn't need to use any consumables:
 * Skill (450), (+40+5 with ),  (+5+75 built-in lure). (This also has the advantage of only taking 2 bag slots)
 * Someone who doesn't have the luxury of the finer gear (but still has 450 skill) can still have no junk casts by simply using a +100 lure (available by several different means). This only requires +25 fishing.
 * This can be done with any of 5 poles:
 * -- available through a quest to anyone who gets a fishing skill of 225
 * and -- poles available through the daily fishing quests
 * -- requires Exalted with the Kalu'ak
 * -- From the tournament


 * Getting down to only using +75 lures (which can substantially reduce costs) and still avoiding all junk casts requires +50 skill, which can be done with several different combinations:
 * The tournament pole (+40), the lager (+10)
 * The tournament pole (+40), and any two of (+5 each):
 * Boots
 * Hat
 * Nice Line
 * Cheap Line and gloves enchant
 * A nicer Wrath pole (+30), the lager (+10), and any two of (+5 each):
 * Boots
 * Hat
 * Nice Line
 * Cheap Line and gloves enchant
 * Nat's pole (+25), the nice line (or the cheap line and the gloves enchant) (+5), the lager (+10), Boots (+5) and a hat (+5).
 * (+50) and any pole.