Fishing for Stonescale EelsFollow

My first encounter with stonescale eels was a few patches ago when they added a substantial number of stonescale pools in Tanaris. Fishing those pools provided a nice source of stonescale eels, granted it wasn't grandoise in any fasion, but I was able to find a few pools every time I went to the coast of Tanaris. Now however, every time I take a trip to the Tanaris coast, all i find are oily's firefin's and floating wreck's, all the stonecale's appear to be heavily farmed by now (as would be expected).

I started trying a new approach in order to get those stonescale's, I tried fishing straight off the coast, but finding the right area proved daunting. I tried off the pier in Feathermoon Stronghold in Feralis, I tried off the Azshura coast, I even tried some random puddle in Felwood. So far my greatest turnout of stonescales was from the pier in Feathermoon, with a whopping 1 eel every 20 or so casts.

I asked everyone I could think of to ask where to go, and the answer I got was to go to Azshara, however the coastline isn't quite far enough. There appears to be numerous islands off the coast of Azshara in what is called the Bay of Storms where lvl 58 elite sea giants roam. This is where my guildies eventually guided me to in search for my wealth in stonescales.

I went there this afternoon all decked out with my brand new big iron fishing pole, a pair of cheap cloth gloves that I had enchanted with a fishing boost, and a stack of aquadynamic fish attractors, and I was all set to fish up the Bay of Storms. When I got there I fished for about an hour without a single stonescale eel biting, and I was about to curse my bad luck when another guildie pointed out to me that the stonescales come out at night!

So here I am at work itching for the week to complete so that I can stay up hour upon hour in the wee hours of the eve fishing for those wily stonescale eels that have as yet escaped the fisherman's grip. Once I have the opportunity to acctually fish the Bay of Storms at night, I will let you all know the results. I did mannage to fish up a healthy ammount of winter squids durring that hour or so, more than I had ever gotten from the pier at Feathermoon Stronghold.

After I made the original post, I had the idea to actually check what the website has to say about stonescale eels in general, and I have to say that my observations are confirmed to a "T". The page that describes the eel states from numerous posters that the best time to fish the eels are indeed from 12am to 5am server time. I am ofcourse anxious to try this out.

On a side note, it appears that another nice place for the eels is off the coast of the Hinterlands, which I would have never thought of, considering that I am deathly affraid of the Hinterlands for numerous deaths experienced while I was in my mid to high 40's.

Ugh, fishing all night! Here's the next bit of data from 1:30am to 3:15am this morning. If I can keep up with this determination in recording this data, I'm pretty sure that I can calculate a kind of trend that may or may not allow me to predict what time of day (or night rather) the best chances to fish up the stonescales are. Ofcourse, rather I would suspect that the actual chances of catching a stonescale at any particular time of day is a completely random occurrance, but I'm a nerd, so here you go:

# Lures/#of Eels/Total Eels/Total Mins/ST
----------------------------------------------------------------
__17__/___4__/___39___/___85___/01:30
__18__/___1__/___40___/___90___/
__19__/___7__/___47___/___95___/01:45
__20__/___5__/___52___/__100___/
__21__/___2__/___54___/__105___/02:00
__22__/___3__/___57___/__110___/
__23__/___2__/___59___/__115___/02:15
__24__/___6__/___65___/__120___/
__25__/___4__/___69___/__125___/02:30
__26__/___4__/___73___/__130___/
__27__/___4__/___77___/__135___/
__28__/___0__/___77___/__140___/02:45
__29__/___2__/___79___/__145___/
__30__/___2__/___81___/__150___/03:00
__31__/___3__/___84___/__155___/
__32__/___6__/___90___/__160___/
__33__/___3__/___93___/__165___/03:15

Well, that's your next chunk of raw unadulterated data that all those statisticians who may or may not be nerdier than me can stuff into their T-200's and generate whatever graphical whoosit whatzit that they can mannage.

Here are a few excel charts that I had uploaded to photobucket:

Total Stonescale Eels caught per Time Spent Fishing

Total Stonescale Eels caught per Aquadynamic Fish Attractor used

# of Stonescale Eels caught per Aquadynamic Fish Attractor used

These graphs are for the day 1 data, in other words yesterday (Sunday Nov 12th, 2006).

After I have gathered data from tonight, I will try and post it tonight before I go to bed, but I cannot promise.

Here's the last bit of data for day#2, I have one more night that I can do this before I go back to work.

# Lures/#of Eels/Total Eels/Total Mins/ST
----------------------------------------------------------------
__26__/___3__/___59___/__130___/03:30
__27__/___2__/___61___/__135___/
__28__/___1__/___62___/__140___/03:45
__29__/___1__/___63___/__145___/
__30__/___1__/___64___/__150___/04:00
__31__/___2__/___66___/__155___/
__32__/___6__/___72___/__160___/04:15
__33__/___2__/___74___/__165___/
__34__/___2__/___76___/__170___/04:30
__35__/___2__/___78___/__175___/
__36__/___3__/___81___/__180___/
__37__/___3__/___84___/__185___/04:45
__38__/___5__/___89___/__190___/
__39__/___1__/___90___/__195___/05:00

Rate up for such diligent testing and sharing data. An excellent thread!

Thank you for answering my questions. I think the glove enchant is only +2, but I could be wrong. I'm glad you have been avoiding nodes, as it's nice to see the "base" catch rate for the area. There is one question you didn't answer. How many fish get away at your current (422+/-) fishing skill? Do you lose one in five? One in Ten?

I looked at your charts and have a little suggestion if you don't mind the extra effort. Would you please plot "time slot" versus "eels caught/per lure". For example take all eels caught in the time slot between 23:00 and 24:00 and divide by the total lures used to catch those eels. Do the same math for the other one hour time periods and make a bar chart of the results. This handy chart would tell us the best time slot for catching eels. ;)

Did you mean for each lure?

I look forward to the new data and updated chart. Now if I could just find time to go level my fishing...(I figure I need a base skill of at least 290 to avoid slitting my wrists in the Bay of Storms) :)

Here's that link for #of Stonescale Eels caught throughout the Day at half hour intervals:

# of Stonescale Eels caught throughout the Day(at 1/2-hr intervals)

I just remembered that I need to post last nights graphs too.

Edit: note that this is only for Sun and Mon night (tonight's not included yet, I'll have to edit the files to accomodate the additional info once I have completed tonight's fishing)

Edited, Nov 14th 2006 at 4:09pm PST by fitzerific

Graph removed since I agree with Reednut that that graph was the bunk.

I'm working on a better graph for determining trends.

Edited, Nov 15th 2006 at 11:49am PST by fitzerific

Thanks Mike!

I think there may be something wrong with this chart. The time scale on the bottom looks strange. It doesn't seem to agree with your earlier bar chart, which shows an average peak in the 1:30 am time slot.

I swiped your data and plugged it into an excel sheet. I made the chart described in my earlier post, and it points to the 1~2 am time slot. I see that you caught quite a few eels from 5~6, but you also used more lures. Therefore, the (eels caught/time spent fishing) is actually better between 1~2 am. This is obviously based only on the data you posted, so perhaps the shift comes from additional data. However, I think the only accurate way to compare time periods is by using eels/lure since you don't fish the same amount of time in each period.

Just a comment tho I didn't read every word of every post as a Horde shaman I was catching these off the coast of the hinterlands.