RuneScape: Dragonwilds Fishing

The wiki is specific about the gate: to begin training Fishing, players must first make their first coarse net and then start the Shrimp Catcher quest. That makes Fishing unusual among the gathering skills, because the barrier is a crafting step and a quest rather than a level requirement or a region you have to reach. If you have not set up a workshop yet, the materials guide covers where the base resources come from.

Unlock

Craft a coarse net, then start the Shrimp Catcher quest

Released

21 April 2026, with update 0.11.1

Skill number

The eleventh skill in Dragonwilds

Skill cap

99, with the Fishing skillcape at the top of the table

Spot types

Net spots and rod spots; a tool only works on its matching type

Stamina

10 per trawl at a net spot; rod catches drain stamina during the fight

Fishing also arrived later than it was meant to. The wiki records that the skill was originally designed to ship alongside Dowdun Reach, and that Jagex held it back to fine-tune it against the raised skill cap of 99. That places it after Dowdun Reach itself in the update order, which matters more than it sounds: the rod tiers run in the same sequence as the regions, so where you are in the world decides which rod you can reasonably be using. The map and locations guide tracks which region arrived with which update.

At a net spot you stand close with any net equipped and use the Trawl action button, which defaults to the left mouse button. Each trawl costs 10 stamina and can pull up junk such as stone or weeds alongside the fish. Nets are the forgiving option in every respect: the wiki states they can be used in any region regardless of the material they are made from, and trawling works from anywhere inside the range of a spot that still has fish in it. Fish a depleted spot and the game simply tells you there are no fish here.

Rod fishing inverts all of that. You have to stand at least a certain distance away from the spot, and you charge the cast by holding the button to throw it further. Overcharge or undercharge and the cast misses — which costs no stamina and no bait, so a bad cast is a wasted second rather than a wasted resource. Fishing without bait is possible, but the wiki notes it makes catching junk considerably more likely.

1. Cast at the right power

   Hold the cast button to add power and throw the line further. A cast that is too weak or too strong misses, and a miss costs nothing.

2. Wait for the bite

   The fish tries to swim off, and its remaining energy appears in a fish bar above your stamina bar.

3. Strafe against the fish

   Use Strafe Left or Right — A and D by default — in the opposite direction to the fish. When the fish changes direction the bar turns red and you have to switch to the other strafe key.

4. Reel once it tires

   A reel prompt appears when the fish is tired enough. Release the strafe key and hold the same button you used to cast.

5. Switch back if it runs

   If the fish starts swimming again mid-reel, drop the cast button and go back to strafing. Repeat until it is landed.

6. Wrong buttons lose the fish

   Press the wrong keys and the fish escapes the moment your stamina runs out.

Five nets, ten baits and five rods make up the whole tool set. The wiki recommends equipping the region-specific rod and its accompanying bait, and publishes the matching table below. It is worth reading that recommendation closely, because the same article flags the reason as needing explanation: the source carries an unresolved explain-why marker against its own sentence, so the benefit of matching a rod to its home region is stated but never quantified.

The five rods map one-to-one onto the five fishing regions, in the same sequence the rest of the game uses: the Ash Rod belongs to the starting region and the Yew Rod to Umbral Sands, with the middle tiers following the region order in between. The weapons guide covers how that power ladder works for combat gear, and the pattern is the same one.

The table below reproduces the wiki’s fish list: the power tier each fish belongs to, the base experience for catching it, its carry weight, the bait it wants and whether it has a pristine variant. The experience column is written from the rod-fishing point of view — the wiki’s own footnote states that the listed figure is the base experience awarded for catching a fish with a rod, with reeling adding two separate lots of 3 experience on top.

Two things in that table look like typos and are not. Raw lobster and raw giant krill both sit at tier 4 with some of the lowest experience values in the list, below trout at tier 2 — the tier column describes the power band a fish belongs to, not a reward ladder, and the wiki does not explain the ordering. Weight is the other column to keep an eye on, because fish run from 0.2 up to 4.5 each and a full trip adds up. That is what makes the level 23 passive, which cuts the carry weight of all fish by a quarter, one of the more quietly useful unlocks in the skill.

Pristine fish are the rare catch unlocked at level 17. They yield more food when cooked, or they can be used as a decoration instead: each pristine fish has a matching trophy that you build from the decoration section of the build menu, using planks of wood and the fish itself. The advice in the Full Fishing Guide is blunt about which to choose — do not cook your first pristine, because the trophy is the only way to keep it.

Magic reaches into Fishing through three spells that sit in the same levelling table as the passives. Fishing Frenzy unlocks at level 10 and enchants a fishing node so that each successful catch pulls out an additional fish of the same type while the effect lasts. Infernal Rod unlocks at level 30 and enchants your equipped rod with fire for two minutes, so that everything the rod catches during that window arrives already cooked. Fishnado unlocks at level 55 and conjures a tornado that pulls up to five fish out of a node at once, with Greater Fishnado at level 60 reducing its cooldown.

Fishing Frenzy

Level 10 — enchants the node; each catch yields an extra fish of the same type

Infernal Rod

Level 30 — two minutes of instant cooking on everything the enchanted rod catches

Troubled Waters

Level 43 — Fishing Frenzy also reduces fish maximum stamina by 15% while active

Fishnado

Level 55 — pulls up to five fish out of a single node

Greater Fishnado

Level 60 — reduces the Fishnado cooldown

The wiki’s experience footnote explains how the spells interact with rewards, and it is worth reading before you plan a session around one. Fishing Frenzy doubles the number of fish but has no effect on the experience awarded. Fishnado pays a flat 20 experience for casting the spell and then experience for each fish it pulls out, and experience boosts apply to all of those sources except that flat 20. The same footnote raises the possibility that rain doubles experience, then hedges it twice over: it says this needs further testing and may only apply to fish caught in Ghornfell.

Fishing levels hand out a mix of passives, recipes and spells rather than a steady stream of new fish. The table below lists every entry the cached wiki article records for the skill, in level order.

On top of the levels, a stack of armour perks, trinkets, food and potions push the experience rate. The wiki lists the following as the boosts available to the skill.

Net and rod fishing pay differently, and the community read is that the two swap places as you level. The Full Fishing Guide argues for net fishing as the faster route to experience overall, on the grounds that trawling is a single action with a fixed 10 stamina cost and no minigame attached, while rod fishing pays more per fish and is the only route to pristine catches. Its suggested switch point is somewhere around level 55 to 60, by which time the stamina drain passives and the fishing spells have accumulated.

The same guide adds a cooking tip that is easy to miss: cook your shrimp, sardines and trout early even if you do not need the food, because cooking them is what unlocks the weak, lesser and focused Fishing potions. Those potions are experience boosts, so the detour through Cooking pays back in levelling speed. The skills and spells guide covers how Cooking and the other skills sit alongside Fishing in the overall progression.

Fishing barrel

Level 34 — a very high capacity store for fish, and the only place raw fish can go; it will not take cooked fish

Tackle box

Level 39 — stores baits, and also fishing rods and nets, and nothing else

Pristine fish trophy

Built from the decoration section of the build menu using planks of wood and the pristine fish itself

Between the barrel, the tackle box and a shelf of fish trophies, Fishing comes with more storage furniture than most skills, which makes it a natural fit for a base with a dedicated working area. The base locations guide covers choosing a site, and the linked chests guide covers how storage links together once your base has more containers than you want to open one at a time.

Nothing on this page is split into a separate guide yet. The two strongest candidates for later are the fish and pristine fish tables, which are reference material a player will want without the surrounding explanation, and the rod-to-region matching, which the wiki itself flags as unexplained. This page keeps both in one place rather than fragmenting the skill, and the farming guide covers the other gathering skill that arrived in an update rather than at launch.