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Pro's and Con's of both?  I've mainly used bait so far, but even at that i've recently just saved up 60 some syphid baskets so i'm going to give those a try on my next outing, i'm rank 13.5, just wondering when and how much it pays off to use different bait(in general, i'm sure specific targets are different, i'm talking just for xp)  Any comments and suggestions are appreciated.

So I've been casting floating minnow at depth 0 for 12 times only lost 1, the other 11 i caught a total of 20 crafish of mostly + varietie. i'm level 15 at tranquil paths lake. grade 3, no school. is this a case of wrong lure for water type, or extreme isolation? either way cant beat skill up, i dont care about selling catches yet anyway just been leveling cul. 

I haven't had much luck in isolating fish, especially those that actually have some value (Sea Cucumber and Dark Bass for instance).  I haven't tried the syrphid baskets yet for the dark bass, but if it would only yield dark bass and crayfish that'd be good.  But for the most part, every area I've fished in, I've tried every bait/lure combo I've had available, and if that bait/lure is appropriate for the type of water I've fished in, I seem to catch all of the fish available in that area with the same bait/lures.

The only big advantage I can see over using a lure vs a bait is that the lures are going to last you much longer.  I haven't done enough testing to see if lures have a lower bite rate vs live bait like it was in FFXI though.  I'm leveling cooking so personally I'm using goby balls when doing saltwater fishing and once my cooking is high enough I'll be using crab balls for freshwater.

If you want easy skillups and don't care about actually catching fish, then using a lure opposite of the water type you're fishing in would work well.  In fresh water you'll catch crayfish and in salt water you'll catch kelp.  I don't know how much the bite rate will taper off trying this method though since I don't have much personal experience doing it.

It may help if you do submit it to the log, just make sure you put in the correct type of lure you were using and make sure you check off the school button at the bottom of the left column. That way when we are able to look up data when it is implemented, we may just be able to choose specific fields like areas, types of lure and check off a "caught in school only" option.

edit:  I take that back, I just tested to see if an ordinary school of fish will produce the same results.  It won't, you will go back to catching crayfish in freshwater with a cage feeder.  Maybe Kida can add another check option in the DoL Log for "leve school"?  Because they are definitely different from a regular school of fish.

Edited by user Tuesday, October 19, 2010 1:05:36 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

i did the level 30 leves from Cedarwood yesterday (south of bloodshore).

the leve where you have to find ideal fishing spots (the 30 minute one) has you fish off the cliffs near there.   It is saltwater and i used a crow fly.  I caught 15 blue coral during the 30 minutes and completed the level with a minute left (i took my time).

This is good information for alchemists, as they can use these for a few different recipes.  I assume using any other opposite water-type lure will work in this instance as well.

I have to make rounds tonight doing some crafting leves and such.  I think I'm going to make a sticky post in a day or two reporting what I catch from each of the leves that have you fish multiple pools.  Hopefully this will aid people in catching some fish for crafting or for profit that would otherwise take hours to catch under normal circumstances.  (such as dart frogs and dark bass)

Black Ghost: 10 (18.18%)
Box Turtle: 2 ( 3.64%)
Crayfish: 19 (34.55%)
Dark Bass: 14 (25.45%)
River Crab: 10 (18.18%)

Dark Bass per Grade:

-5: 1
-3: 1
-1: 1
 0: 1
+1: 2
+2: 1
+3: 1
+4: 3
+5: 3

I noticed you had the depths marked starting on the top as -5 and the bottom being +5. Out of curiousity, are these the official markings for a notch? Is the top of the notch bar considered the bottom of the lake when fishing?

I was mostly wondering because I haven't started tracking on fishing areas yet. But for Mining/Logging, I track the top notch as 0 and the bottom notch as 10, giving a range of 0-10.

Skill          |none|Natures Bounty|  |Total|Total %
No Bite        |  6 |           10 |  |  16 | (32.00%)
Got Away       |  3 |            2 |  |   5 | (10.00%)
Lost Box Turtle|  1 |            0 |  |   1 | (2.00%)
Black Ghost    |  3 |            3 |  |   6 | (12.00%)
Dark Bass      |  5 |            8 |  |  13 | (26.00%)
Crayfish       |  2 |            3 |  |   5 | (10.00%)
River Crab     |  2 |            1 |  |   3 | (6.00%)
Lost Dark Bass |  0 |            1 |  |   1 | (2.00%)
               |    |              |  |     | 
Total          | 22 |           28 |  |  50 |

Weee, more questions, yes I'm inquisitive when it comes to parsing information, sorry!

I'm pretty sure it's safe to assume you did that all at one fishing spot. Have you ever used a different bait/lure at that spot, if so, have you caught something different from those 5 items you had listed? ( Box turtle, Black Ghost, Dark Bass, Crayfish and River Crab)

What about fishing pole?

The reason I wonder is because the stats you present seem similar to my findings with logging/mining. A node will always present the same 5 resources, the notch will present different ratios of the afforementiond 5 resources.

For fishing though there are no 'nodes'. I would guess that fishing is relative to logging/mining where the notch depicts the ratio of the 5 resources. But, if you switched bait/lure, would you be presented with a new set of 5 resources or would the bait/lure just present you with a different ratio of the first 5 resources? ( Box turtle, Black Ghost, Dark Bass, Crayfish and River Crab)

Edited by user Tuesday, October 19, 2010 3:16:07 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I'm pretty sure fishing works in the same manner as logging in this instance.  I've done a little bit of logging and I've noticed that in addition to there being x amount of items that can be gathered from a tree, individual trees produce different results.

Those five fish mentioned above are the only ones that are possible to catch in Horizon as far as we know.  I've done a lot of fishing there with many freshwater baits and those are the only fish I've ever pulled up.  The exception to the rule here is if you fish from a school, as they yield fish you normally wouldn't catch.

I think the only factor the fishing rod has in this game is how many more jigs you get before the stamina runs out.  Fearsyth may be correct in that it also increases the quantity and quality (+1, +2, +3) that you catch as well.  In FF11, there were synthetic and wooden rods and they had their own specialties (wooden drained stamina faster but gave less time to catch, synthetic was vice versa) but this doesn't seem to be present in FF14 since all the rods are made by woodworkers.  (synthetics were made by alchemists)

Fearsyth has posted some interesting data and I'm thinking of keeping track of this sort of data about the 'notches' in my personal spreadsheet.  I always found it pretty random and didn't think it was much of a factor.  Unfortunately you can't always fish in the same notch because it'll eventually come to the point where you get "Nothing Bites", but you can move back to that spot eventually and make the most of it.

Edited by user Tuesday, October 19, 2010 4:07:14 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified