Minecraft is Fishing

If you’ve got water anywhere around you in your Minecraft world, you can use it to go fishing. This is helpful early on for getting some basic food and later for taming and breeding ocelots.

What you’ll need

Basically all you’ll need to get started is a fishing rod and some water to fish in, which can be as little as a single source block (however be aware that the rods durability drops rapidly when the bobber hits a solid block, so it’s best to cast into larger bodies of water). As mobs don’t drop fishing rods and they’re rare to find in villages you’ll probably need to make one. The recipe is quite simple using only 3 sticks and 2 string, items easily obtainable within your first few days in your Minecraft world (sticks from wood planks [wood planks from wood] and string from spiders).

How to fish

With your fishing rod selected just right click on a water source block and the bobber will fly out toward the block and land in the water. It will sit there for a bit until a fish is on the line which you’ll know because your bobber will dip below the level of the water for a brief moment. When that happens right click again to quickly pull the line back in toward you. If you right clicked in time a fish will fly from where the bobber was toward you where hopefully it will be caught by your character. If not, never fear, it simply means it landed behind you. To help prevent the fish from flying past you just fish with your back to a wall whenever possible. The fish you catch can either be cooked and eaten, or given to ocelots to tame them and breed them (no need to cook those given to ocelots). Fishing usually has a chance to catch a fish of 500:1 every tick (each 20th of a second) and will yield an average of 1 fish every 25 seconds. To speed things up fishing outside while it’s raining has a chance to catch a fish of 300:1 every tick increasing the average up to about one every 15 seconds.

Fishing for non-fish

The fishing rod can also be used to hook other creatures like mobs and villagers to move them closer to you. This counts as an attack and so normal consequences of attacking will apply, but this will deal no actual damage. Once hooked, right clicking again will “reel them in” pulling them rapidly toward you. This is useful for getting certain mobs in certain places (like a creeper into a trap set to get you music discs). Keep in mind however that this use of the fishing rod incurs a triple durability penalty, so the rod’s durability will rapidly deteriorate.

Conclusion

While fishing may not be the most exciting aspect of Minecraft, it does provide some vital resources and affords a player a unique strategy of dealing with and moving other creatures. As such it’s highly recommended that you check out fishing in your N3rd C0rn3r.