Midnight Fishing Guide: Leveling, Fish List & Tips

This Midnight Fishing guide covers everything you need to know about Fishing in the Midnight expansion, from leveling 1 to 300 to finding the best fishing pools and using lures. Fishing works a lot like it did in The War Within, but there are 20 new fish, 12 types of fishing pools, craftable fishing rods, lures, and a new fishing line system.

Fishing Trainer

You can learn Midnight Fishing from Drathen in Silvermoon City.

Silvermoon City
Silvermoon City
Drathen
Drathen

Track Fishing Pools

If you don't have this already, buy an Angler's Guide from the Fishing supply vendor near your trainer. She is sitting by the water there. If you face the trainer she is on the left side.

Learn the book and this will teach you how to track fishing pools on your minimap. This is very useful for finding pools.

Find Fish pool tracking

Leveling Fishing

You can level Fishing to 300 in any zone, but sticking to the right zones means less grey trash.

Zone Skill Levels

The fishing skill cap is 300, same as The War Within. Each zone has a "recommended" skill level, but it's a bit misleading. What I noticed is that the recommended skill is when you stop getting grey trash from the previous zone's skill bracket, so you actually shouldn't switch zones too early.

  • 1-75: Eversong Woods, Silvermoon City, or Pool Fishing in any zone.
  • 75-150: Eversong Woods, Silvermoon City
  • 150-225: Zul'Aman, or any of the previous zones.
  • 225-300: Harandar, or any of the previous zones.

Note: If you fish in Pool your skill doesn't matter but it's a lot slower way to level.

How to level Fishing faster:

With the Better Fishing addon, you can bind a key to cast and interact, then just listen for the splash sound while watching something on another monitor.

  1. Install the Better Fishing addon.
  2. Go to Settings > Keybindings > Better Fishing > set keybinds for Cast and Interact.
  3. Find a quiet fishing spot.
  4. If you have a second monitor, put WoW on it. If not, go into windowed mode and shrink WoW to fit another window beside it.
  5. Find a good podcast or a series on a streaming service.
  6. Start watching, then click on WoW to keep it in focus.
  7. Make sure the show isn't too loud, and turn WoW sound effects up so you hear the splash.
  8. When you hear the splash, press your keybind to catch the fish, then press it again to recast.
  9. Repeat for 3 to 4 hours. You'll hit 300.

Tip: If you bind the interact key to a side mouse button (mouse-4 or mouse-5), you can browse Reddit, hover over the WoW window when you hear the splash, click the button, and go back to browsing. You don't even need to focus the WoW window.

Voidstorm Fishing and Oceanic Vortex

There is not much water in Voidstorm, and most of it is too shallow to fish in. I did find two spots where you can do open-water fishing, but you have to be very specific where you stand because only certain parts are deep enough. One is around (35.86, 47.10) and the other around (35.24, 46.02). At the second spot, you can stand on the big bone sticking out of the ground to fish without aggroing anything. I'm not sure if this is even intended by Blizzard.

Midnight Fishing Voidstorm

The other way to fish in Voidstorm is through Oceanic Vortex bubbles. These are very hard to find because they don't show up as Fishing Pool even with fish tracking on. They spawn in random locations and have a higher chance to drop Null Voidfish and Ominous Octopus. The pools last much longer than normal pools.

Midnight Fishing Oceanic Vortex

Fish in Midnight

There are 20 fish in Midnight, split across Common, Uncommon, and Rare quality. All fish can be filleted using the Cooking ability Thalassian Filet to create fillets for cooking recipes.

The locations below show where you're most likely to catch each fish.

Noteworthy Fish

These two fish are kinda unique and worth mentioning separately. The rest of the fish are just ingredients for recipes, but these two have special effects.

  • Blood Hunter - Spawns a hostile Blood Hunter Spirit when fished up. Kill it for an extra Blood Hunter. If you find this annoying, craft an Amani Angler's Ward to prevent spirits from spawning for 30 minutes. The recipe drops from treasure fishing pools.
  • Warping Wise - Using this fish teleports you to a random location in a random Midnight zone.

Common Fish

Fish Open-Water Zones Pools
Arcane Wyrmfish Eversong, Harandar Bubbling Bloom, Sunwell Swarm, Blossoming Torrent
Gore Guppy Zul'Aman Hunter Surge, Surface Ripple
Lynxfish Eversong, Zul'Aman Bubbling Bloom, Sunwell Swarm, Surface Ripple
Root Crab Zul'Aman, Harandar Obscured School, Surface Ripple
Sin'dorei Swarmer Eversong, Zul'Aman Bubbling Bloom, Sunwell Swarm, Surface Ripple

Uncommon Fish

Fish Open-Water Zones Pools
Bloomtail Minnow Harandar Lashing Waves
Fungalskin Pike Zul'Aman, Harandar Lashing Waves, Obscured School, Surface Ripple
Restored Songfish Eversong, Harandar Bloom Swarm, Bubbling Bloom, Sunwell Swarm, Blossoming Torrent
Shimmer Spinefish Eversong, Harandar Bloom Swarm, Bubbling Bloom, Sunwell Swarm, Blossoming Torrent
Shimmersiren Voidstorm Viscous Void, Oceanic Vortex
Sunwell Fish Eversong Sunwell Swarm, Blossoming Torrent
Tender Lumifin Harandar Blossoming Torrent

Rare Fish

Fish Open-Water Zones Pools
Blood Hunter Zul'Aman, Voidstorm Surface Ripple, Hunter Surge, Viscous Void, Oceanic Vortex
Eversong Trout Eversong Sunwell Swarm, Bubbling Bloom
Hollow Grouper Voidstorm Viscous Void, Oceanic Vortex
Lucky Loa Zul'Aman Obscured School, Surface Ripple
Null Voidfish Voidstorm Viscous Void, Oceanic Vortex
Ominous Octopus Voidstorm Viscous Void, Oceanic Vortex
Twisted Tetra Harandar, Zul'Aman Obscured School, Lashing Waves
Warping Wise Voidstorm Viscous Void, Oceanic Vortex

Recipes Using Fish

Most Cooking food buffs have multiple recipe versions that give the same stat, and every stat has at least one cheap version that only uses Thalassian Filet, Practically Pork, or Plant Protein. Most players will just use the cheaper recipes, so the unique fish recipes are not worth farming for personal food buffs. Check the Cooking Guide for the full recipe list.

Feast Recipes

These are the only two feast recipes that use unique fish. Both have alternative versions that use herbs instead, so fish feasts are not strictly necessary. Whether the fish or herb version ends up cheaper will depend on Auction House prices.

Recipe Fish Used Buff
Quel'dorei Medley 6x Eversong Trout, 4x Restored Songfish +65 Highest Secondary (Feast)
Silvermoon Parade 4x Lynxfish, 4x Arcane Wyrmfish +50 Primary Stat (Feast)

Skinning Lures

Skinners use fish to craft Majestic Lures, which summon Renowned Beasts that drop Majestic Hide, Majestic Fin, and Majestic Claw. You need Skinning specialization points in Talented Tracker to unlock these. Unlike feasts, there is no alternative recipe for lures, so the fish used here will likely be the most valuable on the AH.

Alchemy Transmute

Alchemists can transmute fish into gems with School of Gems. This costs 4x Eversong Trout, 12x Bloomtail Minnow, 20x Sin'dorei Swarmer, 1x Stabilized Derivate, and 3x Composite Flora.

Treasures & Rare Pools

These are rare fishing pools that can spawn in any zone. They have a chance to drop rare items, recipes.

Pool Contains Notes
Careless Cargo Treasure Lure recipes, fishing line components, Motes, and other treasures.
Lost Treasures Treasure Very rare. Similar to Careless Cargo. I often got nothing from these, but that might be a bug.
Viscous Void Blood Hunter, Hollow Grouper, Null Voidfish, Ominous Octopus, Shimmersiren, Warping Wise Best way to get Null Voidfish and Ominous Octopus

Items

These are the items that I got from pools and treasures that I thought were interesting.

  • Aquarius Bloom - Turns any fishing pool into a Bloom Swarm.
  • An Angler's Deep Dive - Increases Midnight Fishing skill by 10. Found in Careless Cargo and Lost Treasures pools, as well as Patient Treasure chests.
  • Angler's Anomaly - Creates an Oceanic Vortex pool anywhere you want. Fished from treasure pools. The summoned vortex lasts much longer than natural pools.

Patient Treasures

While you're fishing, you'll occasionally get a random Patient Treasure chest spawn nearby. These can contain the items like An Angler's Deep Dive, Bloomline and Glimmerline pieces, cosmetics, and lure recipes.

Midnight Fishing Patient Treasure Chest

Fishing Rods

Fishing rods are crafted by Engineers. The green and rare rods are tradeable on the Auction House. The epic version is still Bind on Pickup, so you will need to place a Crafting Order for that. The epic rod requires Fused Vitality which is also Bind on Pickup. You can buy Fused Vitality with the weekly event currency, so you don't need Herbalism or any crafting profession to get it.

Does Perception even matter?

I've done testing and looked online if anyone could verify that Perception matters for fishing in any way, and the answer seems to be no.

It doesn't increase your chance of catching rare fish or reduce the chance of catching junk. I have never seen any evidence that it does anything for normal fishing. In mining and herbalism, you get a message when you get something extra from Perception procs, but there is no such message for fishing. If you have any proof that it works on fishing, let me know.

Fishing Recipes

Fishing has its own craftable recipes. Lures increase your chance of catching a specific fish for 30 minutes, and the Amani Angler's Ward prevents Blood Hunter Spirits from spawning. All recipes are Bind on Pickup and drop from fishing, usually from Careless Cargo or Lost Treasures pools.

The Amani Angler's Ward is the most useful here if you fish in Zul'Aman, it prevents the annoying Blood Hunter Spirits from attacking you.

Midnight Angler's Grand Line

The Midnight Angler's Grand Line is a fishing line that doubles your treasure drops. It doesn't require any profession skill to create, you just combine fished components.

How to Craft

You fish up line fragments and combine them step by step. There are two chains you build separately, then combine into the final Grand Line. All fragments drop while fishing anywhere in Midnight zones, and every tier can be bought or sold on the Auction House.

Bloomline Chain

100x Shredded Bloomline → 1x Stranded Bloomline
20x Stranded Bloomline → 1x Weak Bloomline
5x Weak Bloomline → 1x Angler's Bloomline

Glimmerline Chain

100x Shredded Glimmerline → 1x Stranded Glimmerline
20x Stranded Glimmerline → 1x Weak Glimmerline
20x Weak Glimmerline → 1x Angler's Glimmerline

Final Combine

1x Angler's Bloomline + 1x Angler's Glimmerline → 1x Midnight Angler's Grand Line