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How Pools Appear

Fishing with bobber.

The mechanisms that make pools reappear are a mystery to most anglers. As are the reasons why they find more of one pool type than another. Knowledge of these mechanics can let you beat other anglers to the best catches, so are worth understanding.

All pools are grouped into linked sets, even though they seem to be separate. Each zone has at least one set, and at least one set per inland or coastal area in that zone. Each set consists of a series of possible locations where a pool might appear. The number of possible locations in the set varies by area.

When a pool appears it can be of any type possible in the set. For example, if an area can contain Oily Blackmouth School and Floating Wreckage Pool, either of these two types can appear at any of the possible pool locations. Some sets contain only one type of pool (such as Patches of Elemental Water). Others contain up to four different pool types (such as the coast of Feralas).

The probability of a specific type of pool appearing might be equal for all pool types in the same area. In the previous example, an Oily Blackmouth pool might be just as likely as a wreckage pool. "Cherry picking" means that you are more likely to find one pool type than another pool type.

Cherry Picking

Cherry picking involves fishing only one type of pool in an area, and leaving all the others.

The type of pool that eventually "replaces" the one that is fished, is not decided by the type of pool that was originally fished.

So in the previous example, if you were to fish only Floating Wreckage Pools, and ignore the Oily Blackmouth Schools, eventually there would be far more Oily Blackmouth pools to fish than wreckage pools: When a wreckage pool is fished, there is only a 50% chance of a wreckage pool appearing to "replace" it. So for every two wreckage pools you fish, only one new wreckage pool will appear. To maintain a steady supply of wreckage pools to fish, someone needs to be fishing the Oily Blackmouth pools too.

Cherry picking is the main reason why you might be able to find plenty of pools of one type in a zone, but none of another pool type.

The 3 Rules

There appear to be three principles that determine pool spawns within a set:

  1. There are a fixed number of pool spawning locations in the set, any of which may spawn. There are often several sets in any one zone, so it can be hard to see this pattern.
  2. There is a maximum number of pools that will be visible at one time across the set, regardless of time since last catch. This is typically between 30-50% of the all possible pool spawning locations.
  3. Each pool will commonly respawn 60-65 minutes after it was last being fished (emptied). This time period is variable: A pool is very unlikely to respawn in less than 40 minutes, but will sometimes take as long as 90 minutes. This rule does not apply to pools in low-level zones, such School of Deviate Fish or School of Sagefish.

In simple terms, if nobody else has fished recently, fishing one pool empty will cause another pool in the set to spawn. For low-level fish, such as School of Sagefish in Mirkfallon Lake (Stonetalon Mountains), there will always be a fixed number of pools available to fish (in that case, two). In higher-level zones, if you fish all the pools in the set faster than the time delay on respawning, eventually you will run out of pools to fish and will need to wait for them to respawn.

For further discussion and evidence, read the Pool Appearance topic.

Understanding how pools spawn is essential to being able to find and fish the rarest pools, which otherwise might never be found. It is particularly important when in competition with other anglers.

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