People often ask me, "Can you make money fishing, because it seems worthless to me?" And my standard answer is, "Yes, but it takes just as much attention as other crafts." You need to pay attention to the market: look at the Auction House and find out what is in high demand and go fish that up. Or raise Cooking or Alchemy or some other craft and turn your fish into something that sells well on the Auction House. Alternatively, you could catch your fish and sell them to an NPC. But think about it this way: Fishing is the only craft where you get paid to raise your skill. No matter how bad your catches are when you fish, you still earn FFXI Gil every time you reel in a fish.

Until the fishing update early in 2005, all you had to do was sit around and hit a macro. That made fishing pretty boring. With the current fishing system, excitement has been introduced by forcing the player to fight a fish to reel it in. This makes it seem more like you are actually fishing. Surprisingly, this has turned a lot of people off from fishing, but that is all their loss. Not only is fishing more fun because of the change, but skillups come a little quicker too, making it not as much of a pain to raise your fishing skill as it used to be.

What and Where?

The first step to fishing is getting a rod and some bait. There are many different rods and each has a different attribute associated with it. Some rods make it easier to catch a certain fish, while some rods snap every time you fish with them in a certain area. To know more about the abilities of rods, including prices and where to get them, see Fishing 110: Rods and Bait. That section also covers what bait you need to catch each fish.

Assuming you are starting at level 0 and have never fished before, a good place to start is with a Bamboo Fishing Rod and use Little Worms as bait. If you have the FFXI Gil though, go for a Hume Fishing Rod or Halcyon Rod because they will not break on these low level fish you are looking for. In my experience, Windurst Woods, Windurst Walls, and Windurst Waters are the best places to start fishing. Due to the fish that you can catch in these three zones, you will have a greater success rate and, therefore, make a little more FFXI Gil. If you are unable to get to these zones yet, Port San d'Oria or Bastok Markets (Waterway) will do. (Note: there is a difference between the Waterway and River areas of Bastok Markets: the River is the one that looks like a river that flows and runs under the bridge that leads to Bastok Mines).

If you want to venture out of town (because fish tend to bite more outside of city limits), I would suggest heading to West Ronfaure (Knightwell), around (G-10). This is one of the premier Moat Carp fishing spots in Vana'diel. Any time though, the fishing instinct message pops up with !!! at the end, you should release whatever has bit because it will likely break your rod; do this by hitting Escape to cancel. In fact, any time you are not fishing for large fish or items and that message pops up, you should cancel because it is either a large fish, a monster, or an item.

Note: If you can get your hands on a Penguin Ring, it will help your fishing skillups a lot. I have seen screenshots of people getting a full level in 7 casts. See Fishing 311: Advanced Quests (Fish Ranking) for info on how to get one.