Rare Fish and Fishing Achievements
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Once you've got your bait game on lock, you're ready to catch yourself some rare fish. Most zones have 12 rare fish you can catch to unlock an achievement for that zone; once you get all the zone achievements, you unlock the Fisher King achievement, which grants you the title of Master Angler.
I'm almost 100% sure, at least at this level, that the 12 rare fish are not tied to any specific fishing hole (I had thought for a while that the blues might be) but rather water types, with 1 blue fish and 2 green fish being found in each of the 4 water types. This could make things difficult, for instance, in Stonefalls, where there's only 2 river fishing holes that have been discovered.
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In order to know if you've caught a rare fish, you need to turn auto-loot off. Why, you ask? Because rare fish are currently bugged, and do not loot into your inventory. If auto-loot is turned on, you'll never know you caught one, unless you check your achievements. Hopefully, ZOS will address this soon. When they took the game down on Thursday, they fixed a bug that let you catch veteran rank swords in Stonefalls (along with less important bugs like PEOPLE BEING ABLE TO LOG INTO OTHER PEOPLE'S ACCOUNTS).
Other Fishing Facts
- A fishing hole appears to have a maximum of 15 total fish in it, though you can discover one with much less. This may be because of other fishing, or possibly because the fishing hole spawned like that.
- If fishing holes respawn (I've never seen one respawn), they respawn veeeeeeeeery slowly, at least longer than 15 minutes.
- Changing instances, for instance (lol jinx) by logging out and logging back in, can change what fishing holes are spawned on the map.
- Allegedly (according to a loading screen tip, fishing in groups improves your chance of catching a rare fish. I've tried this only once, and we fished out our hole after 1 fish.
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Fishing Ad-Ons
There are currently no add-ons specifically for fishing (that I know about), however there is one in particular that can be helpful.
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EsoHead Markers, which requires EsoHead to work, recently added fishing holes to the list of things it marks, which is great for remembering the fishing holes you've been to before. The only problem with it, which is a minor one, is that it makes where you were standing while fishing, not the hole itself, so you wind up with several markers around the hole in any place you've ever fished from, which I guess is kind of cool if you enjoy NBA shot charts.
Weird Fishing Bugs
Aside from the most obvious bug of rare fish not showing up in your inventory, there's some other weird little quirks to fishing.
"You can not fish while in Werewolf form."
I mean, that doesn't seem like a bug... a giant werewolf probably wouldn't fish with a fishing pole. Except it happens to people who aren't in werewolf form. It seems to be only at certain fish holes at random times, and my ZOS support ticket said they were working on it and to log out and wait 15 minutes to log back. Logging out and logging back in immediately, or just moving on to another hole, worked fine for me.
The Invisible Pole
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If you cast a line, then hit E to reel it in, and hit E again to cast it again before that animation finishes, you'll fish with an invisible pole.
Starter Island Fish Achievements Not Showing Up
I haven't experience this one myself because the Inner Sea Scalyfin of Bleakrock Isle fish continues to allude me, however multiple people have reported catching blue fish on the starter islands not receiving the achievement for it.
The 12th Fish Needed for the Next Zone's Achievement Not Being Found
Other people on r/ESOFishing are reporting that they can't find the 12th fish they need for an achievement, but instead are finding fish from other areas (like when I found Stinkfish, a fish from Wrothgar (which doesn't even exist in the game, BTW) in Stonefalls).
Update: We have the first documented achievement being earned. Stinkfish in Stonefalls is still a motherfucker, though.
The Behind-the-Back Cast
I haven't figured out this technique, but a guy on reddit posted it and it's pretty hilarious.
Getting Disconnected from the Internet While You Have a Line Cast
This happened to me last night during a thunderstorm, when my internet briefly went out. I had a line cast when the internet went down and after 45 seconds of waiting and not realizing I was offline, I hit e to reel it in early. Except it didn't reel it in, I just started running around with the fishing pole in my hand and my line connected to the fishing hole. It was silly.
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Fishing Guilds
If any of this stupid, broken, bugged crap sounds like fun to you, and you want to hang out with some like-minded individuals, check out r/ESOfishing on reddit, or send me a message or mail at @doctor_apocalypse in the game to get an invite to the Tamriel Fisherman's Guild, the #1 PvF guild in all of Elder Scrolls Online (that's for the NA server; if you're on EU, you can message @mafiosen to join the European chapter).
