I've done a few updates to the valuable fish chapter, to add price links to Wowecon and Allakhazam. No prices are shown, since precise prices were felt to be misleading. Prices are also still likely to change a lot: Ingredients becoming more common, evolving demands of raiders (such as a gradual shift away from Hit buffs as gear becomes better), and adjustment by players to WotLK inflation (most obvious in the level 80 daily quest income).
I thought it would be interesting to compare prices of catches (often cooked).
Prices are for single items (although most items will be sold in stacks of 5 or 20). Prices are based on the median auction house price as listed on Allakhazam. The list is split between items that do, and do not, require Northern Spices. Items shown "**" are gained from fishing, but hard to farm by fishing.
Un-Spiced
Baked Manta Ray - 2g
Dalaran Clam Chowder** - 5g
Eternal Water** - 24g
Grilled Sculpin - 2.5g
Pickled Fangtooth - 1.5g
Poached Nettlefish - 3g
Pygmy Suckerfish - 10g
Savory Deviate Delight - 1g
Slippery Eel - 1g
Smoked Salmon - 2g
Spiced
Blackened Dragonfin - 9g
Cuttlesteak - 4.5g
Dragonfin Filet - 6g
Firecracker Salmon - 7g
Imperial Manta Steak - 5g
Poached Northern Sculpin - 7.5g
Snapper Extreme - 5g
Spicy Blue Nettlefish - 6.5g
Spicy Fried Herring - 4g
Overall, Spiced food adds a 3-4g premium. Allakhazam gives a median price for Northern Spices of 11g. The implication is that currently it is most profitable to do the cooking daily and sell all the Northern Spices you can muster. I suspect that will adjust once most cooks are at 450 skill, and demand for spices reflects demand for the best buff food; rather than demand to try and reach 450 cooking.
Dragonfin dishes sell well, but obviously all need Northern Spices, so you cannot make a huge amount of money here.
Among the non-spiced food, Nettlefish seem to be the most profitable catch. That could simply be because those are found in a zone that many players have not reached yet and/or is not an obvious zone to fish in when training or trying to catch a Dark Herring.
Pools or Not?
The best-selling single catch remains the Pygmy Suckerfish, at around 10g each. That poses an interesting problem: Do you fish pools or not? By fishing pools you gain no suckerfish, but you tend to gain more buff food.
Let's try some simplistic analysis:
Start with Smoked Salmon/Pickled Fangtooth example. From 100 catches in inland open water, you'll gain about 22 of each fish you want, and 10 suckerfish. On average. That's about 33+44+100 = 177g per 100 catches. Roughly 350g per hour from open water.
Pools give a 90% catch of your choosen fish, with no suckerfish. Assumimg an equal number of Salmon and Herring pool, that's roughly 68+90 = 158g per 100 catches. And pool fishing takes more time, because you need to move. You have a better chance of crates or Crystalized Water, but even if we assume 24g per 100 catches (equivalent of 10 Crystalized Water), that doesn't make pools more profitable than open water.
But I started with the cheapest fish! The same analysis of Nettlefish comes out slightly different: A 30% catch from open water, plus suckerfish, gives 90+100 = 190g per 100 catches from open water. Pools (90% Nettlefish) give 270g per 100 catches. Given the proximity of pool spawns in the Basin, pool fishing is probably favorable to open water.
If you are primarily fishing to make spiced food, the value of suckerfish becomes far less important.
I also ignored Snapper Extreme in the first example: In small volumes, the "trash fish" can make money. So in the Salmon/Herring case, we would also gain about 18 Snapper Extreme (55 fish), generating an extra 90g per 100 catches.... but only if we could gain about 40 Northern Spices per hour of fish, which isn't practical if you fish for more than 20-30 minutes per day on average.
No easy answers.
I'm interested in any further thoughts. Both the balance between pool and open water fishing or profit; and any observations on what is actually selling - particularly anything not considered here so far. Oh, and are raw fish selling? Specifically for producing feasts.
