Gone Fishing........

Outside of raiding and my daily heroic for my valor points, this week has been mostly focused on fishing. The reason? Seafood Magnifique Feast, the reward for the guild achievement, That's A Lot Of Bait, which requires the guild to catch 10,000 from pools.

This had been a soft goal of mine since Cataclysm launch and I had half expected that the guys and girls of Saturday Knight Fever may have achieved this without actually anyone trying. After 2 months of the expansion a combination of the new "fun fishing" Blizzard promised at BlizzCon 2009 not materializing and the fact that most (if not all)  caster food is fished from open water rather than pools meant that we were not even half way through.

It was time for action. I decided that I was gonna fish the last 5100 on my own (aside form the daily 20-40 fish that the guild were fishing up. I looked through the achievements list and saw some great looking achievements but most of them required fishing in open water rather than pools. Seriously Blizz give us a break. I did Identify a few that did involve fishing in pools but I had already completed most of them. However, there were 3 that showed promise, Mr. Pinchy's Magical Crawdad Box, Turtles All the Way Down and One That Didn't Get Away.

I have been trying for  Mr. Pinchy's Magical Crawdad Box since TBC, it is one of my fishing nemeses and I have wanted Turtles All the Way Down and One That Didn't Get Away for a long time but never really tried because the old Fish Feast fish were easier to fish in Wintergrasp and that meant no chance of the Sea Turtle, and the other just seemed too dull with no reward.

I did some research, thanks El's Angling, and discovered that an efficient way was to farm Turtles All the Way Down and One That Didn't Get Away by fishing for the Dark Herring in Howling Fjord. I read horror stories of 8000 casts, I died a little inside... However for the greater good of the guild it was worth a shot. In 3 60 minute sessions and 526 casts over 2 days I managed to get my Dark Herring, this was consistent with that of my friend Jibbajabba, who acquired One That Didn't Get Away in 369 casts. I have moved back to Azeroth and have started fishing the profitable fish in pools in Uldum and managed to raise the figure to 6000 I was still not satisfied though. We were still too far short and realising that this was not a 1 man job, I decided to encourage guild mates to fish. My not so subtle attempts at guilt tripping them into it failed, there was only 1 hope left. Put a bounty on fish. So I posted on our forums that I would pay upto 20 gold extra per stack of certain fish than the auction price and pay upto 1000g for certain achievements.The full list was:

• 1000 gold Accomplished Angler
• 1000 gold Turtles All the Way Down
• 500 gold Master Angler of Azeroth
• 500 gold Mr. Pinchy's Magical Crawdad Bo
• 500 gold One That Didn't Get Away
• 100 gold Fish Don't Leave Footprints
• 100 gold Northrend Angler
• 100 gold Outland Angler
• 100 gold The Scavenger
• 50 gold The Old Gnome and the Sea 

So far the plan is reaping rewards as we have now hit 7500 fish an increase of 2500 in just 3 days. Hopefully by this time next week I'll be cooking up the Seafood Magnifique Feasts  for our raids.

*** EDIT ***
Thursday saw us hit the 10,000 target. Cost me 6000g which in my opinion was gold well spent. It did encourage a few to join the effort, some wanted to keep their fish  for their own buff foods and stuff which is understandable.

Also I managed to get  the Sea Turtle but annoyingly   Mr. Pinchy's Magical Crawdad Box still eludes me.