Some NOOBs don’t realize that Fishing and Cooking are made for one another. If you do one without the other you’ll be wishing you hadn’t later on. As with any profession, Cooking and Fishing can sometimes dig a hole in your pocket. If this is a problem for you or if you simply want to know how to be uber rich check this site out.

Fishing and cooking go hand in hand...catch fish and cook them. Higher level cooking skills require many components derived from fishing. To skill up fishing and cooking it doesn't take a great deal of talent, instead it takes an intense grind consisting of thousands of casts, fish, and flames to cook them over. I'll send you around to various lakes, trainers, and NPCs who bare recipes. You will catch approximately 1317 fish to reach skill 300 or 2181 to reach skill 375. I used the formula 1 + (lvl-75) / 25 to calculate the number of fish required for levels 75-375. This is a linear curve which deter... nevermind. Basically you're going to stand around casting 3-4 thousand times catching thousands of fish and then frying their brains out over a fire.

It is important to note these instructions are just one method of leveling fishing. Fishing can be leveled in all sorts of ways, if you want you can catch fish entirely from Orgrimmar's noobie pond, or Ironforge's. It does not matter where you fish, the chance you level per catch is based on your fishing skill level. The only benefit to following the following instructions is to have the neccessary fish to level cooking in parrallel or to sell valuable fish on the Auction House

Lures

If you can afford to, you should always use a lure to maximize the number of fish you can reel in. If you can afford or find nightcrawlers, use those too. These will effectively decrease the amount of casts you'll make to catch each fish...this will make your fishing a lot easier.

For fishing, before skill 125, pick up a Expert Fishing Book. The Bass and You and Mithril Head Trout Recipe from Old Man Heming and Wulan in Booty Bay.

For cooking, Horde: Pickup your Expert Cookbook from Shadowprey Village (Desolace). Alliance: Shandrina by Mystral Lake (Ashenvale).