Over the years, Blizzard has tried to make fishing exciting and experimented with various mechanics (different sized fish, special lures, fish chunks, etc), but in the end most of them have been stripped away for simplicity. Now it is you, your bobber, and an optional bait. I honestly don't think you even need a high fishing skill to catch non-junk anymore. You certainly don't even need to equip a pole to just "fish" a pool of whatever. Open water gives you an 80% chance to catch Generic Fish (a mackeral, I think) and a 20% chance to catch the Fish of that Zone (Salmon, Koi, Perch, whatever).
Level 110 I had, but my fishing skill was mired around 600 or so. I need not have fretted, fishing levels up stupidly fast now thanks to the rare fish. Once caught, rare fish can be sold for 10g per or chucked back in the water for a +5 skill gain each. A few fish 'events' resulted in 8 or so rares at a time, so I was 800 without much effort. The rares themselves are the challenge.
Bait is randomly fished up from open water and generally has one of a few effects: a 3 minute buff that makes it more likely to catch a certain rare fish, you will get a buff that lets you see secret hidden pools of fish that contain rares, a debuff that summons a monster whose entrails become bait, and a couple of WTH baits. One spawns a sleeping murloc, which you slap. He runs around throwing rare fish everywhere and is utterly hilarious. The one that summons a horked off landshark is a lot less hilarious.
The problem in general is that in most zones pools are extraordinarily rare and, thanks to cross server zones, are quickly fished out by roving fishermen. That is, when the pools aren't accessible only by water walking or aren't camped by elites or fast spawning quest mobs. Sigh.
To maximize your efforts, there is a special bait that doubles your chance of fishing up other bait for ten minutes. This bait is sold by a reclusive mage outside Dalaran named Magross (probably). "Outside Dalaran? Isn't Dalaran a floating city?" Why, yes it is. He has a floating chunk of rock to call his very own you can access by glider, feather fall, or a trinket you can fish up in the underbelly of Dalaran's sewers. Magross has a little pond to call his very own and gave up a life of conjuring to pursue his true passion. He has a currency of his own called "Drowned Mana" which conveniently is only found in the pond 10 feet away from him. It's an uncommon pull, but you have a chance of fishing up a doodad that summons an elemental out of the pool. Upon defeat, all casts give drowned mana for 3 minutes or so. So, you can spend drowned mana on boosting your reputation with him for fishing junk like a duck-shaped bobber or what-have-you, but I was only interested in Arcane Lures to get the extra bait. I had no idea how many I'd need, so I got 40, just to see. Holy crap, I'm glad I did.
Even with the buff, the rarity of the pools meant that frequently I'd only be able to hit two or three before the buff expired and even then, more bait wasn't a guarantee. Heck, in some cases even getting the rare bait wasn't a guarantee I'd get the rare fish before time expired on it. The rare baits are "unique", so you can't stockpile them.
In the worst case ever, after an hour and a half of hunting I got and popped a bait that allowed me to see "Ghostly Queenfish" pools. I was near water and I ran around for 5 minutes and never saw a pool. At this point, I said "screw it" and bought replacement bait off the AH for 2500g. Yes, it was ridiculous, but I did NOT want to hunt more pools. A quick look on the internet told me of a couple of spawn areas so next time I wouldn't be caught fishless. So I went there and used the bait.
Sure enough, in the five minutes, I found three separate pools of beautiful ghostly queenfish, swimming ethereally-- ALL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMN LAKE. For want of a 100g potion of water walking, my 2500g bait was wasted. At this point emotion overrode common sense and I went back to the AH. Spent another 3400g on another bait (the cheapest that was left), and 200g on water walking potions. Went back and got my goddamn fish!
Overall catching the rares took the better part of a day, but I have literally hundreds of spare fish crammed into every pocket. After I got the "Bigger Fish to Fry" achievement, I went back to some nice koi pools I had found that were both plentiful and non-monster-infested and found the pearl that started the final quest chain.
Going back to Dalaran, Khadgar patronizes me and tells me to "go stick it in the fountain or something".
"Yeah, I really don't know what I was expecting you to do either."
Ok, fine. I chuck the pearl into the fountain. Nothing happens except the visual changes for me. Big pearl floating above the fountain. I walk away and get ambushed by Nat Pagle who tells me that he's found a spot where the fish are frenzying out of control! Only I, the Master of FEEESH can set things right! I travel with him to a secluded pond surrounded by murlocs. I clear them all out and we start fishing in earnest. After gathering a bunch of frenzied fish, we hunt down what's agitating them and fish it up: a horrific denizen of the deep! Nat screams, "Kill it with fire or whatever you adventurers use!" One arcane-infused fishstick later, Nat rips off the lure from the Angler's head and gives it to me: the artifact pole! WOO! It inherently confers to ability to breathe water, rendering my old tuskarr pole from Wrath of the Lich King finally obsolete.
Now that I have the thing, I find it gets its power by me catching and releasing rare fish. (Instead of +5 fishing, I now get +50 artifact power per fish). Can do! After another couple of hours at the pole, I've leveled the pole over a half dozen times, gaining all of the main powers I wanted: teleportation to the nearest fishing node (on a 5 minute cooldown), waterwalking and turning into a fish and gaining +speed while underwater. Other unlocked abilities include a chance to fish up entire schools of fish at once and reduced enemy detection while fishing.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the guild was nonplussed. ><>
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