There are three fishing rods available.

1. Beginner's Rod
   
2. Improved Rod (85 gems)
   
3. Advanced Rod (155 gems)
   
4. Deep Sea Rod (quest reward)

The Beginner's Rod is frustrating, slow, wasteful, and, in my opinion, it is designed to make you feel the need to buy a better rod. Using this rod means that many fish will get away and take your bait no matter how skillful you are. Early in the game, you do not have a lot of money and losing bait may not be something you can easily afford.



The Improved Rod changes fishing from a minigame you often lose into one you can usually win, but you will still have to be alert and fast. It costs 85 gems.

An Improved Rod is included in the Fishing Starter Pack (In Shop / Treasures / Item Bundles) which adds 10 lug worm bait and costs 89 gems. (This pack is a slight bargain if you are in the habit of buying coins with gems, getting you 20 coins value per gem, but feel free to not get the pack and spend 80 coins instead of 4 gems to buy bait.) This pack is also included in the School of Dragons Starter Pack which contains many items and is sometimes available at the discounted price of 495 gems.

The Advanced Rod is very similar to the Improved, but it makes fishing even easier. With it you still have to play the game to win the fish, but you have a little more time to react so it is less stressful and in my opinion it is worth the price of 155 gems. If you already have the Improved Rod, read and practice the technique section below before you decide to upgrade. If you are buying gems either directly or with membership, this should be easy to afford. If you only have the few free gems, it is up to you whether this is worth saving up for with whatever bonuses or prizes or friend referrals you can do. If it feels hard to afford, go with the Improved Rod instead. One benefit that I enjoy about the Advanced Rod is that you no longer have to see an advertisement for a better rod every time you finish catching or losing a fish.

I do not have experience with the Deep Sea Rod but have heard that it is similar to the improved and advanced rods and is given during the quest The Wide, Open Sea. To start this quest you need to have finished a series of quests: Sky High[dreamworks-school-of-dragons.wikia.com], Dangerous Drought, Clueless Queries, Another Cloudy Day, The Great 'nut Debate, and Mysteries of Gronckle Iron. Starting Sky High may require viking level 18. Completion of The Wide, Open Sea may require that you have a gronckle dragon, but you get the rod before that and there may be a way around the groncle requirement (fishing in another place.) Please comment if you know anything about prerequisites.

If you are not ready to upgrade your rod, you can minimize losses by only reeling when the needle is nearly at the left end of the scale. Reel before it gets into the left red box, but stop reeling when it gets to about 1/4 of the scale, about where the box showing the name of the fish starts. This will give the fish more room to pull on the line before it breaks.



I honestly got so frustrated with losing my bait after a struggle with a fish that I was thinking of seeing if I could feed my dragon just from chicken eggs and avoid fishing, but then I decided to try upgrading my rod and that made fishing so much better.

Improved, Advanced, and Deep Sea rods are similar to each other and share the same technique. The difference between these is that the needle moves more slowly on the Advanced than on the Improved, giving you a little more time to react and making it easier to catch every fish.

The steps of fishing

1. Select Bait
   
2. Cast
   
3. Strike
   
4. Reel
   
5. Drag

By now you already know from practice how to select bait and cast and strike. You have also done a lot of reeling, but now you are going to do it differently.



After striking, the core of fishing starts. You need to quickly get your mouse in position over the Drag button that appears. Don't press it yet, but keep it over the Drag button until you catch your fish.

• Press and hold the space bar so that you are reeling the entire time. Do not release the space bar until you catch your fish.
  
• Press Drag whenever the needle is above halfway. Release Drag when it gets back down to halfway.

This is strange and different from what you have learned already, but trust me, it will work. Holding space to reel the whole time speeds up the catch and it means the needle can never go into the left red unless you hold Drag too long. Pressing Drag before it gets into the right red means your line will never break. This sounds simple, but expect to lose a few fish while you get the hang of it. Getting started is the hard part. Once you have learned it you will only lose a fish when you are not paying attention.

Happy fishing! Feed those dragons well!