WoW Fishing Pools Guide: School Fishing, Respawns, and Routes

Open-water fishing catches whatever is available in that zone. Pool fishing lets you target specific fish — and those specific fish are almost always worth three to ten times more than the generic open-water catch. Understanding how pools work, where they spawn, and how to route between them is the difference between a casual fishing session and a serious gold farm.

How Fishing Pools Work

Pool Spawn Points

Fishing pools do not spawn randomly across a zone. Each pool type has a fixed set of spawn locations — typically 10 to 30 points spread around the coastline or waterways. When a pool is fished out or times out on its own, the next pool spawns at one of those predetermined points.

This is critical for route planning. Once you map the spawn locations (either manually or using GatherMate2), you can build a patrol route that visits every possible spawn point efficiently. A tight, well-optimized route means you almost never have to wait for a new pool — you finish one and another has already appeared somewhere ahead of you on the circuit.

Pool Catch Limits

Each pool disappears after a set number of successful catches:

• Vanilla/Classic pools — Usually 5 catches per pool before it despawns
• TBC pools — Typically 3-5 catches depending on pool type
• Wrath pools — 2-4 catches; some rare pools like Wreckage have higher counts
• Cata+ pools — Generally 3-5 catches; Cata introduced Volatile Water as a bonus in many pools

Pool Timers

If a pool is not fished, it will despawn on its own after roughly 10-15 minutes. This means if you are on a long route, pools you passed earlier may have vanished by the time you loop back around. Faster route completion = fewer wasted spawns.

Types of Fishing Pools

Pool Type	Version	Notable Drops
Stonescale Eel Swarm	Classic Era	Stonescale Eel (flask material)
Oily Blackmouth School	Classic Era	Oily Blackmouth (alchemy)
Firefin Snapper School	Classic/TBC	Firefin Snapper (alchemy)
Mudfish School	TBC	Feltail, Mote of Water
Glacial Salmon School	Wrath	Glacial Salmon (cooking)
Dragonfin Angelfish School	Wrath	Dragonfin Angelfish (Agility food)
Fathom Eel School	Cata	Fathom Eel (raid feast)
Highland Mixed School	Cata	Lavascale, Volatile Water

Building an Efficient Pool Route

Step 1: Map the Spawn Points

Install GatherMate2 and fish the zone for 2-3 sessions without a route. The addon records every pool location. After 2-3 sessions, you will have 80-90% of the spawn points mapped.

Step 2: Generate the Route

Install the Routes addon and let it generate an optimized path between all your recorded GatherMate2 nodes. Routes uses a traveling-salesman algorithm to find the shortest circuit — significantly better than any manual route you would draw by eye.

Step 3: Time Your Loop

Do a test circuit without fishing and time it. If your loop takes more than 8-9 minutes, it is too long — pools you passed at the start will have despawned before you complete the circuit. Trim your route to the highest-density section of spawn points if needed.

Pool Fishing vs Open Water: The Math

Method	Catches/Hour	Target Fish %	Gold/Hour
Open water	~350	40-60%	Low
Pool fishing (manual route)	~250	90-100%	High
Pool fishing (optimized route)	~280	90-100%	Very High

You catch slightly fewer fish per hour pool fishing because of travel time between nodes. But 90-100% of your catches being the premium fish vs 40-60% in open water more than compensates. Pool fishing wins on gold per hour in almost every scenario.