WotLK Fishing and Cooking Guide: 1- 450 (WoW Classic Leveling)

Be it for leveling or for raiding, food is a very good consumable. That’s why cooking has always been regarded as a useful profession. However, with the WotLK release and items like Great Feast and Fish Feast cooking lost some of its value. Now it’s enough for only one person in the raid to have the needed skill to feed the whole raid. Still, if you’d like to be self-sufficient and have a supplemental source of income, continue reading this WotLK fishing and cooking guide.

Cooking pairs really well with fishing and some players like to level them in sync. This guide is for them. Fishing is a very polarising profession, people either love it or hate it. However, there is no denying it can you provide you with some fun items and make you money. 

If you want to level only fishing, you can do it by fishing in any low-level pool of water from beginning to end. Fishing is a unique profession in that way. 

Total mats needed for 1-450 fishing and cooking

Fishing and cooking guide WoW Classic

Start by learning fishing from one of these trainers:

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Start by learning cooking from one of these trainers:

Apprentice fishing and cooking (1 – 75)

Buy Recipe: Brilliant Smallfish and Recipe: Bristle Whisker Catfish from Sewa Mistrunner in Thunder Bluff or Catherine Leland in Stormwind.

Buy Recipe: Longjaw Mud Snapper from Naal Mistrunner in Thunder Bluff or Tharynn Bouden in Goldshire, Elwynn Forest. 

Horde players should go to Stonebull Lake in Mulgore, next to Bloofhood Village, and start fishing.

Alliance players should go to Crystal Lake in Elwynn Forest and start fishing.

You can stay here until you reach fishing 75. At this point, you will be catching Raw Brilliant Smallfish and Raw Longjaw Mud Snapper.

Cook all Raw Brilliant Smallfish until you reach skill level 50. The recipe goes yellow at 45, so you might need to catch a bit more than 50 smallfish.

From 50 to 75, cook Raw Longjaw Mud Snapper.

Go train Journeyman fishing and cooking (75 – 150).

Journeyman fishing and cooking (75 – 150)

Horde players should go back to Thunder Bluff and fish from the pond on the low rise, next to the auctioneers. 

Alliance players should go back to Stormwind City and fish from the canals. 

You can stay here until you reach fishing 150. At this point, you will be catching Raw Brilliant Smallfish, Raw Longjaw Mud Snapper, and Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish.

From 75 to 100, cook Raw Longjaw Mud Snapper. This recipe goes yellow at 90, so you might need to catch a bit more than 25 snappers. 

From 100 to 150, cook Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish. This recipe goes yellow at 140, so you might need to catch a bit more than 50 catfish. 

Go train Expert fishing and cooking (150 – 225).

Expert fishing and cooking (150 – 225)

From this step on, the route is the same for both alliance and horde players.

Go to Booty Bay in Stranglethorn Vale, find Kelsey Yance, and buy these recipes – Recipe: Filet of Redgill, Recipe: Sagefish Delight, and Recipe: Mithril Head Trout.

Now move to north Stranglethorn Vale, and fish in the river next to the Nesingwary camp. Or if there’s too much competition/PVP going on, you can move to Alterac Mountains and fish in Lordamere Lake – that place is usually peaceful.

You can stay here until you reach fishing 225. At this point, you will be catching Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish, Raw Greater Sagefish, and Raw Mithril Head Trout.

Be sure to fish from schools as well. You might get a Weather-Beaten Journal, which will teach you to Find fish. 

From 150 to 175, cook Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish. This recipe goes green at 165, so you will need to catch quite more than 25 catfish. 

From 175 to 225, cook Raw Greater Sagefish or Raw Mithril Head Trout. Both of these recipes will go yellow at 215, so you might need to catch a bit more than 50 fish. 

Go train Artisan fishing and cooking (225 – 300).

Artisan fishing and cooking (225 – 300)

When you reach fishing skill 225 you can do a quest to get a better fishing rod. Seek Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh and take the quest Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme. The quest is simple but it requires a lot of traveling around the world.

Once you are done, you will get Nat’s Lucky Fishing Pole, which gives +25 fishing.

While traveling around the world, be sure to go to Tanaris and visit Gikkix in Steemwheedle Port. Buy Recipe: Nightfin Soup and Recipe: Poached Sunscale Salmon from him. 

Feralas will be your last step in the classic portion of the guide. First, buy the Recipe: Baked Salmon from Vivianna if you are an alliance player, or from Sheendra Tallgrass if you are a horde player.

Start by fishing in the lake around Camp Mojache or in the smaller lake south of Dire Maul. You can stay here until you reach fishing 275. At this point, you will be catching Raw Redgill, Poached Sunscale Salmon, and Raw Nightfin Snapper. Nightfin Soup will require some Refreshing Spring Water as well. 

From 225 to 275 cook any combination of these fish. Filet of Redgill will go yellow at 250, the other two recipes will stay orange till 275.

When you reach 275, move to Jademir Lake in north Feralas. Stay here till your reach 300 fishing. You will be catching Raw Whitescale Salmon. Cook 25 salmon to get to 300 cooking.

Fishing and cooking guide TBC

Master fishing and cooking (300 – 350)

Learn Master cooking (300 – 375) from one of these trainers:

While in Zangarmarsh, Alliance players should buy Recipe: Blackened Trout and Recipe: Feltail Delight from Doba in Orebor Harborage. If you can’t speak with him, first do some quests in the Temple of Telhamat in Hellfire Peninsula and in Orebor Harborage to get your Kurenai reputation up.

Horde players can buy Recipe: Blackened Trout from Gambarinka in Zabra’Jin and Recipe: Feltail Delight from Zurai in Swamprat post. 

Then move to Terokkar Forest where Alliance players can buy Recipe: Golden Fish Sticks from Innkeeper Biribi in Allerian Stronghold, and Horde players can buy it from Rungor in Stonebreaker Hold. 

Go to any river in Terokkar Forest and start fishing. You can stay here until you reach fishing 350. At this point, you will be catching Barbed Gill Trout, Spotted Feltail, and Golden Darter.

From 300 to 325 cook trouts and feltails. Both of these recipes go yellow at 320, so you might need to catch a bit more than 25 fish. 

From 325 to 350 cook darters. This recipe goes yellow at 345, so you might need to catch a bit more than 25 fish. 

Fishing and cooking guide WotLK

Grand master fishing and cooking (350 – 450)

Learn Grand Master fishing (350 – 450) from one of these trainers:

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Learn Grand Master cooking (350 – 450) from one of these trainers:

Regardless if you went to Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra, just find a body of water and start fishing. Stay here until 375. Once you reach 375, you should be able to fish anywhere in Northrend using a lure – so pick the zone you favor the most and find some water area.

From this point on, your fishing skill won’t matter that much and you don’t have to concern yourself with leveling it. Level ups will come naturally with you doing the fishing dailies or just farming from time to time.

From 350 to 400 cooking, you’ll have several recipes at first disposal. All of these recipes start yellow. Check the auction house which one sells the best, or has the cheapest mats, and then cook it. You can always cook the one you are going to use yourself. 

These 3 recipes go green at 365 so try to do them first if possible:

Grilled Bonescale – Bonescale Snapper

Sauteed Goby – Barrelhead Goby

Smoked Rockfin – Rockfin Grouper

These recipes go green at 382 so you might have to cook a lot of fish till you reach 400:

Poached Nettlefish – Nettlefish

Pickled Fangtooth – Fangtooth Herring

Grilled Sculpin – Musselback Sculpin

Dalaran Clam Chowder – 2x Succulent Clam Meat

Baked Manta Ray – Imperial Manta Ray

Smoked Salmon – Glacial Salmon

From 400 to 415 cook Black Jelly. This recipe starts yellow, and goes green at 415. Each one requires 3x Borean Man O’ War, so you might have to fish a lot before you reach 415. You can find Borean Man O’ War in the pools along the coast of Borean Tundra.

415 – 450 At this point in time you will be able to do Dalaran cooking daily quests. Each quest will reward you with Dalaran Cooking Award. You can trade those awards for new recipes at the cooking supplies vendor.

Slowly start buying those recipes and cooking them. I suggest first buying the recipes you will use yourself or the ones you think are the most profitable. 

It may be somewhat of a longer process, but with a little bit of patience, you’ll easily level your cooking to max skill level. 

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Thank you for reading our WotLK fishing and cooking guide! Don’t forget to visit your cooking trainer every day to do the daily quests. Mostly all of them are very simple and can be done in or around Dalaran. They will reward you with awards you will be able to trade for new recipes. 

Marcia Chase will give you fishing dailies every day. Those are very simple as well. The Bag of Fishing Treasures you’ll receive as a reward can continue some pretty valuable items. Happy fishing!