Comments

Comment by Alcest

Flavor text like this one always makes me smile. It's always fun to have semi-4th-wall-breaking humor in games, and I wish Blizzard would do it even more often than they currently do.

Comment by jjanchan

Axefish is a Rare fish that can be fished up in coastal waters across the Broken Isle, using the bait Axefish Lure.

Axefish Lure, in turn, can be obtained from Message in a Beer Bottle, also fished up in coastal waters.

Note that you need to be in the "Great Sea" to obtain the Message in a Beer Bottle - far enough out from the coast of any zone that your location changes.

There are a number of Rare fish in Legion, and items (bait or otherwise) that will help you catch them.
The Rare fish and items to catch them are zone specific (although some are obtainable on any shoreline of the Broken Isles).

Rare Fish

There are 18 rare fish coming in Legion that can be fished up. Each rare fish grants +5 to Fishing skill when used, consuming it in the process.

There are 3 Rare fish per zone, and 3 that can be caught on any coastal waters.
These can be fished up from a Fishing skill of 1, so this can be an effective way to power level Fishing.
Catching one of the rare fish listed below while fishing will grant the achievement A Cast Above the Rest. Catching them all will grant the achievement Bigger Fish to Fry, which is a requirement to get the Underlight Angler Fishing Artifact Weapon.
All Rare fish are Bind on Pickup.
If you are fishing with the Underlight Angler equipped, you will obtain a DIFFERENT version of each rare fish that grants Artifact Power instead of Fishing skill (e.g. you would fish up Coldriver Carp instead of Coldriver Carp)

Note that this does not retroactively apply to rare fish you obtained before getting the Artifact - the only use for these short of maxing fishing skill is vendoring for a decent chunk of change.

The Rare fish in the chart below are marked with a star (*)

Fishing Bait and Items

Some of the items that help you catch Rare fish will spawn and NPC that grants a fishing buff; others contain bait, or spawn NPCs that drop bait.

All fishing bait buffs last for 2 minutes once used (except for Rusty Queenfish Brooch and Ancient Vrykul Ring, which last 5 minutes each).
All buffs last the full duration, except for Moosehorn Hook, which expires as soon as you catch a bait.
Almost all baits can be bought/sold on the Auction House. Use this if you are having trouble with a particular fish!

The exception to this is the Stunned, Angry Shark, which has a 1 minute duration in your inventory.

All baits are Unique, meaning you can only carry one. The further caveat to this is that you WILL NOT catch any bait that is currently in your inventory!

This can be used to your advantage if you are looking for a particular bait in a zone - by having certain baits in your bags, you will ensure you do not catch them again.
If you are wanting to obtain multiples of the same bait, you can put baits on the Auction House, mail them to an alt, or put them into a Guild Bank or Guild Bank Tab that only you have access to. This will allow you to catch the same bait again.

A portable mailbox like MOLL-E (Engineering) or GUMM-E (from the Draenor garrison Engineering Workshop) is a huge boon when doing this out in the field!

It is worthwhile saving some rare fish bait, in order to level Artifact Power on your Underlight Angler if and when you get it.

Items and Rare Fish by Zone

Highmountain	Val'sharah
Item	Used to Obtain	Item	Used to Obtain

Drowned Thistleleaf

Funky Sea Snail (1)	Salmon Lure	Rotten Fishbone (3)	Ancient Mossgill*
Salmon Lure	Ancient Highmountain Salmon*	Nightmare Nightcrawler	Terrorfin*
Frost Worm	Coldriver Carp*	Drowned Thistleleaf (4)	Thorned Flounder*
Swollen Murloc Egg (2)	Mountain Puffer*

Azsuna	Suramar
Item	Used to Obtain	Item	Used to Obtain

Skrog Toenail (5)	Aromatic Murloc Slime	Enchanted Lure	Magic-Eater Frog*
Aromatic Murloc Slime	Leyshimmer Blenny*	Demonic Detritus	Tainted Runescale Koi*
Pearlescent Conch	Nar'thalas Hermit*	Sleeping Murloc (7)	Seerspine Puffer*
Rusty Queenfish Brooch (6)	Ghostly Queenfish*

Stormheim	All Coastal Legion Waters
Item	Used to Obtain	Item	Used to Obtain

Moosehorn Hook (8)	Silverscale Minnow Soggy Drakescale	Message in a Beer Bottle (10)	Axefish Lure
Axefish Lure	Axefish*
Silverscale Minnow	Thundering Stormray*	Stunned, Angry Shark (11)	Seabottom Squid*
Ancient Vrykul Ring (9)	Oodelfjisk*	Decayed Whale Blubber (12)	Ravenous Fly
Soggy Drakescale	Graybelly Lobster*	Ravenous Fly	Ancient Black Barracuda*

Notes:
* Indicates a Rare fish
(1) Funky Sea Snail is an item that will summon a Bitestone Fishbrul that drops a Salmon Lure when killed.
(2) Swollen Murloc Egg is an item that will spawn a Murloc NPC, Swamprock Tadpole, that grants the buff Blessing of the Murlocs, increasing your chance to fish up Mountain Puffer.
(3) Rotten Fishbone is an item that will attract a Druid NPC (Lorlathil Druid) that casts the The Cat's Meow buff on you, increasing your chance to fish up Ancient Mossgill.
(4) Drowned Thistleleaf is an item that will grant the buff Blessing of the Thistleleaf, increasing your chance to fish up Thorned Flounder.
(5) Skrog Toenail is an item that will summon a Salteye Skrog-Hunter that drops a Aromatic Murloc Slime when killed.
(6) Rusty Queenfish Brooch is an item that is required to see Ghostly Queenfish pools in Azsuna.
(7) Using Sleeping Murloc will awaken a Confused Seerspine Murloc, who will run around briefly and drop some Seerspine Puffer into the water.
(8) Moosehorn Hook is an item that increases your chances to catch rare bait in Stormheim, rather than fish.
(9) Ancient Vrykul Ring is an item that is required to see Oodelfjisk pools in Stormheim.
(10) Message in a Beer Bottle contains Axefish Lure when opened.
(11) Using Stunned, Angry Shark will spawn a Landlocked Shark, which will yield Seabottom Squid when killed. Using it on land makes it much less dangerous than in water (hits quite hard).
(12) Decayed Whale Blubber is an item that attracts flies - Ravenous Fly can be looted from these.

Comment by eminent

I just caught one in the Northern shore waters of Highmountain around the Black Barracuda schools. Up around all those murlocs.

Comment by Voxi

While using the Arcane Lure alone does enable you to catch bait for rare fish in pools (it never worked for me in open water), using the Arcane Lure by itself did not help me in obtaining the rare fish the way other posts insinuate that it should.

I wasted several Arcane Lure before accidentally discovering a fast and efficient method of completing the Bigger Fish To Fry achievement.

Remember to fish ONLY in pools.

See jjanchan's post for locations of each specific rare fish and bait required to catch them.

Having your Angler's Fishing Raft and Water Strider Mount hotkeyed will save you quite a bit of time and help you avoid countless mobs, but it isn't 'necessary'.

For Bait:

Find pools in your desired zone.

Apply Arcane Lure.

Fish from pools until desired bait drops.

Arcane Lure lasts for 10 minutes so use it to catch as much bait as you want or need, then reapply if necessary when it's time to use your bait.

For Rare Fish:

Find pools in your desired zone.
Because most of the lures only have a 2 minute duration, you don't want to waste it looking for a new pool, so I found my pools prior to applying the bait.

Apply bait while Arcane Lure is active.
Yes, you want both the Arcane Lure AND Bait to be active simultaneously when fishing in pools for your rare fish.

Fish up your rares.

Precautionary notes regarding Stunned, Angry Shark, should you fish one up.

Duration is 60 seconds, after which it will disappear from your bag.

Be sure to drop it on land away from mobs and kite it around quickly. It hits like a truck and can quite easily kill you.

Comment by Brand

To catch this fish, make sure you go out into the waters until you go into the zone "The Great Sea". Water walking items or the fishing raft are greatly recommended to help you fish in these open waters.

Comment by rachiepoo

This fish can be fished in a Black Barracuda fishing pool. Caught mine near Suramar City 75,76.

Comment by Pseudonaja

Rockaway Coasts which is in northern Highmountain -
Fished in a 'Black barracuda school', 1st cast in the school dropped the 'message in a bottle', popped it and kept fishing in the school and got the 'Axefish' from the same school.

Edit : Caught it about three more times now in Black Barracuda schools in Rockaway coast, while fishing for the Stunned, Angry Shark which also dropped there!

Comment by Graewolfe

Caught both the bottle and the axefish in Black Barracuda pools in north stormheim shore. You DO NOT need to be in The Great Sea to catch either of them. You can fish up either of them anywhere that is considered "coastal waters" just like the other two coastal rares. A better place to get them would probably have been Suramar due to better pool spawns.

Comment by 839416

VERY IMPORTANT

While you can catch the bait fish (Decayed Whale Blubber & Message in a Beer Bottle) on the coast or out at sea, once you attach the bait to your rod you MUST fish in the GREAT SEA!

Do not attempt to fish with your bait attached if you caught the bait on the coast where you caught it at. Make sure you go out far enough where the location switches to Great Sea. After going through multiple Axefish Lures and Ravenous Flys trying to catch their corresponding rares and catching nothing I tried my luck further out and caught 4 of the rare Ancient Black Barracudas my first time. So make sure you don't waste your lure and go out to the Great Sea. This is only relevant for the Coastal Legion Waters rare fish.

Comment by Jiliya

As soon as you have the lure: A good spot for undisturbed and comfortable Ocean Fishing is the small rock island east of Azuregale Bay (Suramar). Since the spot does not have coordinates (or none that are shown on my map), go here: 84,71 and look roughly east to see it. You can swim there, it's not far. There's only some peaceful Lion Seals flapping about. Happy fishing!

Comment by tranquilsea

For all the people who said you need to be in the Great Sea: you are wrong. I got the bottle and popped the lure and fished in a Black Barracuda pool and got it my second cast. That was AFTER I fished up 210 Black Barracudas and ran out to the Great Sea and popped the lure and got NOTHING.

So make sure you fish in the pools because that was very frustrating.

Comment by 1596626

I imagine the confusion is from the fact that Black Barracuda Schools can be found in the core zones (Aszuna, Highmountain, Stormheim, Suramar, Val'Sharah), but the zones themselves are perhaps not actually classified as coastal. I caught mine from a school, but it seems to also be possible to catch it from The Great Sea and perhaps the region called Broken Shore (given what WoWhead shows).

I.e., fish in Black Barracuda Schools or non-core zone ocean both for the bait and the fish.

Comment by 1327145

Suramar Coast, 76.33, 76.79 - 3 pools in close proximity. Axefish was my last for the achievement, and on a single Axefish Lure I got my Axefish on the 3rd cast for the achievement, got the Luminous Pearl on my 5th cast to start the quest, and Stunned, Angry Shark on my 6th cast before the lure expired. Needless to say, the RNG Gods were good to me for a change!

Comment by TronhildaMain

This does NOT have to be used in The Great Sea. I caught the Message in a Beer Bottle from a pool of Black Barracuda on the coast of Suramar just around the southern end of Felsoul Hold. Popped out the lure, fished in the same Black Barracuda pool, and got the axefish.

Comment by 480554

I've been able to catch all the other fish without pools (once the rare lure was applied). This is the first time the lure didn't catch the fish for me. I was standing right where I was when I caught the lure from the barracuda pool.

Comment by SargonStarblade

Just in case anyone was wondering.

If you save up all the rare fish you collected while trying to get your Underlight Angler, like me, don't it won't work. The text is not changed once you get the Underlight Angler.

It still says:

Use: Toss the fish back into the water, increasing Fishing skill by 5, up to a max of 800.

Only new rare fish will say:

Use: Toss the fish back into the water, granting 50 Artifact Power to your fishing artifact.

Comment by RiokaR

After returning to the game and trying this, I was frustrated to realise I already had some of the lures in my bank, and as they are unique, I ended up wasting too much time fishing for nothing. This macro will check if you have an item hidden away in your bags or bank.

/run local id = "133722" local countBags = GetItemCount(id) local countTotal = GetItemCount(id, true) print(GetItemInfo(id)..":", countBags, "(bags)", (countTotal - countBags), "(bank)")

Axefish Lure: 0 (bags) 1 (bank)

You simply need to change the id to the correct item id you are searching for.

Zone	Item Name	Item ID
Azsuna	Skrog Toenail	133701
Azsuna	Aromatic Murloc Slime	133702
Azsuna	Pearlescent Conch	133703
Azsuna	Rusty Queenfish Brooch	133704
Val'sharah	Rotten Fishbone	133705
Val'sharah	Nightmare Nightcrawler	133707
Val'sharah	Drowned Thistleleaf	133708
Highmountain	Funky Sea Snail	133709
Highmountain	Salmon Lure	133710
Highmountain	Swollen Murloc Egg	133711
Highmountain	Frost Worm	133712
Stormheim	Moosehorn Hook	133713
Stormheim	Silverscale Minnow	133714
Stormheim	Ancient Vrykul Ring	133715
Stormheim	Soggy Drakescale	133716
Suramar	Enchanted Lure	133717
Suramar	Sleeping Murloc	133719
Suramar	Demonic Detritus	133720
The Great Sea	Message in a Beer Bottle	133721
The Great Sea	Axefish Lure	133722
The Great Sea	Stunned, Angry Shark	133723
The Great Sea	Decayed Whale Blubber	133724
The Great Sea	Ravenous Fly	133795

Comment by mathiashls

You don't need to go to the Great Sea to catch this fish. Just got my lure and fish in the same pool, at 34.71, 26.46

Comment by Muttie

Got it at first try in Surimar

/way 74,66 50,49

Comment by Eidolon

Caught the Message in a Beer Bottle with Arcane Lure active in a Black Barracude school, technically in Azsuna, however it was at ~31, 37 which is the Grey Shoals (the river delta in the top left of the map). When you look at the map in this area it shows you the whole of the broken isles, not just the Azsuna zone. I opened the bottle, got the Axefish Lure and next cast got the bottle again, so I used the first lure, opened the second bottle to have the lure #2 in inventory (so I could possibly get another bottle if it came along) and the next cast got me an actual Axefish. So it looks like this area counts as the great sea for the purposes of that fish.

View in 3D Links

Quick Facts

Skrog Toenail (5)	Aromatic Murloc Slime	Enchanted Lure	Magic-Eater Frog*
Aromatic Murloc Slime	Leyshimmer Blenny*	Demonic Detritus	Tainted Runescale Koi*
Pearlescent Conch	Nar'thalas Hermit*	Sleeping Murloc (7)	Seerspine Puffer*
Rusty Queenfish Brooch (6)	Ghostly Queenfish*

Videos

Axefish

Item Level 15
Binds when picked up

Use: Toss the fish back into the water, increasing your Legion Fishing skill by 5, up to a max of 100.
Requires Level 39
"Similar to a swordfish, but with a slower attack speed."

Max Stack: 1000

Sell Price: 10

Fishing Locations

This item can be fished in Suramar (50), Dalaran Sewers (27), Azsuna (15), Val'sharah (15), Stormheim (13), and Highmountain (6).

Guides

Legion Fishing Guide Legion Fishing Artifact The Underlight Angler - A Step by Step Guide to Obtaining Legion's Fishing Artifact

Axefish

Fishing Locations

Guides

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