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The Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza is a weekly fishing tournament with some sweet prizes. As the name implies, the tournament takes place in Stranglethorn Vale every Sunday starting at 2 pm server time. On the WoW Forever megaservers, there are multiple winners each time.
When the tournament starts, Riggle Bassbait lets out a zone-wide yell “Let the Fishing Tournament… BEGIN!” and you can start fishing from the spawning School of Tastyfish: you do not need to accept any quest to participate in the tournament.
To win, you need to fish up 40 Speckled Tastyfish and return them to Riggle Bassbait in Booty Bay. If you are not one of the first players to bring them over that week, you can still buy consolation prizes with your fish from Jang who stands next to Riggle.
Guide contents:
- When Is the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza?
- How Can I Enter The Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza?
- Where Can I Catch Speckled Tastyfish?
- How To Win The Stranglethorn Fishing Tournament?
- What Are the Rewards for Winning the Fishing Tournament?
- What Are the Rewards for Other Participants?
When Is the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza?
The Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza fishing tournament begins every Sunday at 2 pm server time.
In the first live tournament, the schools stopped spawning after there were enough winners. In Classic, after all the main prizes have been claimed, you can still fish for the special tournament fish until 4 pm and the vendors who sell other tournament rewards stay up until 5 pm. It is uncertain what the proper behavior should be in WoW Forever.
Time Zones: Because the tournament always starts at 2 pm server time on Sundays, the actual time it starts for you can change depending on your time zone and possible daylight saving time.
How Can I Enter The Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza?
The main thing you need is sufficient fishing skill. In WoW Forever, you can only fish in Stranglethorn Vale if you are an Expert Fisherman (skill cap 225). You can participate already at 150 skill as long as you have your Expert skill cap, but the skill needed to never fail a cast in Stranglethorn Vale is 225, so you will want to use lures if you are below that.
To learn more about fishing and leveling up your fishing skill in WoW Forever, see our Fishing Leveling Guide.
You will also want to be high enough level to comfortably move around Stranglethorn Vale. There are fish all the way from south to north, but for the most flexibility and for trips to Booty Bay, it is useful to be able to move uninterrupted in the higher-level, southern part of the zone. The hostile pirates around Booty Bay are level 40.
Where Can I Catch Speckled Tastyfish?
The main tournament fish, Speckled Tastyfish, can only be caught from School of Tastyfish that spawn during the tournament in the coastal waters of Stranglethorn Vale.
You need a minimum Fishin skill of 225 to ensure that no fish get away.
School of Tastyfish are also the exclusive source of three rare fish that you can turn in during the tournament for other rewards:
How Do I Win the Stranglethorn Fishing Tournament?
To win, you must to fish up 40 Speckled Tastyfish and return them to Riggle Bassbait in Booty Bay as one of the first players to do so.
In Classic and Modern, there is only one winner for each tournament per realm, but Blizzard has greatly expanded the number of winners for the WoW Forever megaservers. This does not necessarily make winning any easier, because the number of players on the megaserver is also much higher than the number of players on a regular realm.
Prepare For The Event
It is vital that you set your Hearthstone to Booty Bay for the tournament, and save its charge for returning the fish to Riggle. This cuts down considerable travel time and allows you to fish at any part of the zone, because there is no quest that you'd need to pick up to start the event.
Where To Fish
You can simply find an uncrowded spot and start fishing as soon as the schools spawn. The zone-wide yell will tell you when the event begins and it is time to start searching for schools.
The schools respawn quickly, so extensive travel should be unnecessary. We do not have much experience with the tournament in the layered megaserver environment yet, so it is uncertain if layer-hopping will become a major feature of the event.
In the first tournament, people managed to get prizes without anything special, just good old fishing and then a Hearthstone trip to Booty Bay. The first tournament was over in a little over 20 minutes, but Blizzard has tweaked the numbers since, and the tournament also had some bugs that may require fixes over the coming weeks.
What Are the Rewards for Winning the Fishing Tournament?
Each of the winners always gets three prizes:
- the Master Angler title until the next fishing tournament (for one week)
- Arcanite Fishing Pole (a wonderful +35 fishing skill pole)
- One Extravagant Extravaganza Coin that can be exchanged for various other rewards
There are currently five prizes you can buy with the Extravagant Extravaganza Coin, and they cost one Coin each, so you would need to be one of the winners five times to get them all. The prizes are:
| Item | Effect |
| Hook Of The Master Angler |
Trinket: Grants water breathing and +25% swim speed on use |
| Surfer Shoes | Boots: Allows water walking |
| Master Angler's Fishing Hat | Hat: Cosmetic |
| Off-hand: Cosmetic | |
| Bitter Baitling | Pet |
Each of the items you can acquire (other than the trinket and boots) are shown in the image below:
What Are the Rewards for Other Participants?
Even if you don’t win the tournament, there are several rewards you can redeem in exchange for the fish you catch from School of Tastyfin during the tournament.
Jang sells the following Coin rewards:
- Handful of Coins for 1 Speckled Tastyfish
- Small Bag of Coins for 5 Speckled Tastyfish
- Hefty Sack of Coins for 10 Speckled Tastyfish
In the beta, you could also buy a Message in a Bottle that could contain rare crafting recipes for 20 Speckled Tastyfish, but it was not available during the first live fishing tournament.
Right next to Jang and Riggle, Fishbot 5000 is willing to redeem any rare tournament fish you catch:
- Rare Fish - Brownell's Blue Striped Racer for Nat Pagle's Extreme Anglin' Boots (+5 fishing skill Boots)
- Rare Fish - Dezian Queenfish for High Test Eternium Fishing Line (single-use item to add permanent +5 fishing skill to a fishing pole, stacking with lures)
- Rare Fish - Keefer's Angelfish for Lucky Fishing Hat (+5 fishing skill Hat)
All the tournament fish only last for four hours (real time), so you must exchange all of your fish during the tournament you caught them in or they will disappear.
You can also catch the one-handed fish mace Rockhide Strongfish exclusively from School of Tastyfish during the tournament. It is a bind-on-equip item and can often be found in the Auction House if you want to get a fish mace for transmog but would rather not try to fish for one yourself.