OSRS Fishing Guide: Fastest 1-99 Training and Best Money Methods

The fastest way to train Fishing without tick manipulation is barbarian fishing, worth roughly 50,000 to 70,000 xp an hour once you clear level 58, and it throws in free Strength and Agility xp on the side. Learn 3-tick manipulation and the same method climbs to 90,000 to 110,000 xp an hour by level 99. This osrs fishing guide covers the full 1-99 route, honest gp/hr numbers for every profitable method, and the paths that make sense if you are broke, AFK, an ironman, or just chasing the cape.

Most osrs fishing guide pages online repeat the same rough numbers without checking them against the wiki or a live calculator, which is how figures like “500k gp/hr minnows” keep getting copied forward years after the real rate moved. Every number below has been cross-checked, and where two good sources disagreed, we say so instead of picking whichever sounded better.

Quick Answer. Fly fish trout and salmon from level 20 to 58, then move to barbarian fishing at Otto’s Grotto until 99. Plain barbarian fishing gets 50,000 to 70,000 fishing xp an hour and trains Strength and Agility at the same time. If you want profit instead of pure speed, minnows at level 82 pay the best gp/hr of any fishing training method, and anglerfish are close behind with far better AFK time.

Every method, side by side

Method	Level	Fishing xp/hr	GP/hr	Best for
Shrimp and Sardines	1-20	5k-15k	Near zero	Getting past the intro fast
Fly fishing (Trout/Salmon)	20-58	20k-50k	Small loss	Only real option before Otto’s Grotto
3-tick fly fishing	20-58	50k-90k	Small loss	Same range, higher effort
Barbarian fishing	58-99	50k-70k	Small	Fastest xp most players sustain
3-tick barbarian fishing	58-99	90k-110k	Small	Absolute ceiling for xp/hr
Drift net fishing	47+	85k+	Low	Strong AFK xp, trains Hunter too
Tempoross	35+	30k-95k	Profit + rewards	Mixing xp with useful unlocks
Monkfish	62-99	30k-35k	~100k-150k	Slow but reliable food
Karambwan	65-99	25k-30k	~150k-250k	Ironman food, AFK-ish profit
Minnows	82-99	40k-55k	~250k-450k	Best raw gp/hr, not AFK
Anglerfish	82-99	18k-23k	~250k-400k	Best AFK profit, overheal food
Sacred eels	87+	20k-23.5k	~250k-350k (via scales)	High-level ironman profit

This is not exciting advice, but it is accurate advice, and that is really the whole point of an osrs fishing guide. For raw speed, barbarian fishing wins almost every bracket. For gold, minnows and anglerfish beat nearly everything else in the game per hour of clicking, and they trade off attention for AFK time in opposite directions.

OSRS Fishing Guide for fastest route, start to finish

Level 1 to roughly 24-26. Fish Shrimp and Anchovies at Lumbridge Swamp or Draynor Village with a small net, or skip most of it with quests. Sea Slug needs only 30 Firemaking, no Fishing requirement at all, and hands you 7,175 xp, enough to reach level 24 on its own. Fishing Contest needs level 10 Fishing to start and gives 2,437 xp, taking you to roughly level 26.

Level 20-26 to 58. Fly fish Trout and Salmon at Barbarian Village using feathers as bait. Regular fly fishing runs 20,000 to 50,000 xp an hour depending on level. If you already tick manipulate, 3-tick fly fishing pushes that to 50,000 to 90,000, though it is not worth learning from scratch just for this stretch.

Level 48-58, prep work. Complete the Barbarian Training miniquest, which needs level 48 Fishing, 15 Agility and 15 Strength, all of which you will already have. This unlocks the Barbarian rod and Otto’s Grotto.

Level 58 to 99. Barbarian fish leaping trout, then leaping salmon at 70, then leaping sturgeon at 82, at Otto’s Grotto. Without tick manipulation you are looking at 50,000 to 70,000 xp an hour scaling up with level. With 3-tick manipulation the same stretch climbs to 90,000 to 110,000. Drop the fish as you catch them; banking costs more xp than the fish are worth.

If you have been doing plain barbarian fishing the whole way, you were not wrong. It carries a full grind on its own, and the strength and agility xp on the side is worth more than most players give it credit for.

Requirements and setup

You need a fishing rod or Barbarian rod, feathers or bait depending on the spot, and access to Otto’s Grotto, which opens after the short Barbarian Training miniquest. No quest requirement gates the main 1-99 grind itself.

Item	Purpose	Cost
Small fishing net	Shrimp, Anchovies	Free
Fishing rod and bait	Sardines, Herring	Under 1,000 gp
Fly fishing rod and feathers	Trout, Salmon	A few thousand gp total
Barbarian rod	Leaping fish	Free once Barbarian Training is done
Angler outfit	2.5% bonus fishing xp	Free from Fishing Trawler, ~6-8 hours
Dragon harpoon	Faster catch rate	Optional, ~5-10% faster, several million gp

The angler outfit’s 2.5 percent bonus saves an estimated 30 to 40 hours across a full 1-99 grind, which comfortably outweighs the 6 to 8 hours it takes to farm at Fishing Trawler. Get it early if you plan to fish a lot. The Dragon harpoon is a nice-to-have for harpoon-based money makers, not for leaping fish, and most budget players can skip it without losing much.

Total cost for the speed route is close to zero. Feathers and bait cost a few thousand gold across the entire grind, and dropped or sold raw fish roughly cover it. If you take one thing from this osrs fishing guide’s setup section, it is that gold is never the bottleneck here, time is.

Quests that skip the slowest levels

Nobody wants to spend an evening fishing Shrimp. Two early quests remove most of that pain and both are worth doing before you touch a net. Sea Slug needs 30 Firemaking and no Fishing level at all, and rewards 7,175 xp, which alone carries a fresh account to roughly level 24. Fishing Contest needs level 10 Fishing to start, so it has to come after a small amount of manual fishing, but it hands back 2,437 xp and lands you around level 26. Do both back to back and you can be fly fishing Trout within twenty minutes of starting the skill.

Money-making methods, ranked by gp per hour

Minnows lead on raw gp per hour once you reach level 82 with a full Angler outfit. You exchange minnows for raw sharks at the Fishing Guild, and current shark prices put the range at roughly 250,000 to 450,000 gp an hour. The catch is attention: minnow spots move every 15 seconds, so this is one of the least AFK profitable methods in the game, and it requires regular banking trips.

Anglerfish sit close behind minnows in profit at roughly 250,000 to 400,000 gp an hour, but with dramatically better AFK time, around 90 seconds between actions. You need 100 percent Piscarilius Houses favour to fish them. Anglerfish also overheal above max hitpoints, which makes them valuable at bosses and in raids even beyond their sale price.

Sacred eels open at level 87 and require Regicide to reach Zul-Andra. The eels themselves are not sold directly; you dissect them with a Cooking level of 72 or higher for Zulrah’s scales, and profit scales with your Cooking level, landing around 250,000 to 350,000 gp an hour for most players, higher with a boosted Cooking level.

Karambwan pays a more modest 150,000 to 250,000 gp an hour from level 65, but it is one of the most useful ironman methods in the game since karambwan is strong PvM food in its own right. Most karambwan fishing happens at Tuai Leit or the Cook’s Guild bank spot, and unlike leaping fish, karambwan is worth banking rather than dropping, since it is the whole point of the trip.

Monkfish bring up the rear at roughly 100,000 to 150,000 gp an hour. They are steady and low effort, but minnows or anglerfish beat them on profit for similar attention once you hit 82.

If there is one section of any osrs fishing guide worth bookmarking and rechecking every few months, it is this one. Fish and shark prices move with PvM demand and content updates, so treat every gp/hr figure here as a snapshot of August 2026, not a permanent number.

OSRS Fishing Guide for cheapest route if you are broke

Fly fishing costs almost nothing and barbarian fishing costs barely more. If you have close to zero gold, skip the Angler outfit grind for now and fish raw. Feathers cost pennies and the outfit is a convenience that saves time, not gold.

Barbarian fishing versus Tempoross, the question everyone asks

Barbarian fishing wins on peak speed. At level 99 with 3-tick manipulation, you are looking at 110,000 xp an hour, well above Tempoross’s ceiling of roughly 95,000. Tempoross wins on everything else that isn’t a stopwatch. It needs no tick manipulation; it hands out the Fish Barrel and Spirit Flakes that make every later method faster, and it does not put strain on your wrists the way hours of 3-ticking does.

The honest answer: use barbarian fishing as your main fishing training method from 58 onward, and drop into Tempoross a few times along the way for the rewards, not as your primary xp source. Ironmen in particular should not skip Tempoross early, since Spirit Flakes alone pay for the time spent there many times over across a full grind.

The most AFK route if you want it low effort

Drift net fishing from level 47 gives 85,000 plus xp an hour with light interaction, and it trains Hunter at the same time. Anglerfish at 82 are close to fully AFK while still paying well, at roughly 90 second intervals. Neither matches 3-tick rates for speed, but both let you genuinely step away between actions.

Ironman and restricted account route

This part of the osrs fishing guide matters more for restricted accounts than for mains, since you cannot just buy your way past a bad food or supply situation. Fishing carries real weight on an ironman. Tempoross from level 35 is worth doing early for the Fish Barrel and Spirit Flakes it rewards, both of which make every other fishing method faster afterward.

Karambwan becomes a primary food source once you hit 65, and it heals well for its cost. Anglerfish overheal past max hitpoints, which matters at bosses like Vorkath and inside raids. Sacred eels at 87 double as a strong late game supply of Zulrah’s scales for antivenom, on top of solid gp an hour. If you are on a hardcore ironman, barbarian fishing is still worth treating as your default method, since the free Strength and Agility xp saves real hours elsewhere.

Mistakes that cost people the most time in fishing training

Every osrs fishing guide worth reading should include the ways people waste time, not just the ways to save it. These are the five mistakes that show up most often in this fishing training grind specifically.

Skipping the Angler outfit. The 2.5 percent bonus xp saves an estimated 30 to 40 hours across the full grind, more than covering the 6 to 8 hours it costs to farm at Fishing Trawler.

Trying 3-tick manipulation cold at level 48. It is a real skill that takes practice away from the keyboard. Most players are better off learning it later once regular play has built the muscle memory, rather than fighting the timing and the level requirement at the same time.

Banking leaping fish. These catches sell for almost nothing and every bank trip costs xp you cannot get back. Drop them and keep fishing, unless you are an Ultimate Ironman who needs the cooking xp from each one.

Forgetting a fish barrel before long AFK sessions at anglerfish or sacred eels, which wastes trips that should have been longer.

Chasing minnows for a relaxed AFK session. They pay well, but the 15 second spot rotation makes this one of the more demanding profitable methods, not a lazy one. If you want AFK profit, anglerfish is the better fit.

What to do after 99 fishing

The fastest route to 99 runs through barbarian fishing at 50,000 to 110,000 xp an hour depending on tick manipulation. If you went the profit route instead through minnows or anglerfish, both stay strong well past 99 for players chasing the 200 million xp milestone. Prices move with demand, so check the Grand Exchange before committing to a money-making method for a long session.

If you covered OSRS fishing guide and trained through leaping fish for the bonus Strength and Agility xp, the Agility Guide covers where to take those levels next. For turning your raw catch into food that actually heals, see the Cooking Guide. If fishing is one piece of a wider gold plan, the Money Making Guide ranks methods across every skill by gp per hour.

FAQ

What is the fastest way to train fishing in OSRS, and does this OSRS fishing guide agree with the wiki on it? Barbarian fishing at level 58 and above, worth 50,000 to 70,000 xp an hour without tick manipulation and 90,000 to 110,000 with it. No other trainable method sustains a higher rate across the full 58 to 99 range, and this matches the OSRS Wiki’s own barbarian fishing calculator.

Is barbarian fishing worth it without tick manipulation? Yes. Plain barbarian fishing still gets 50,000 to 70,000 xp an hour and trains Strength and Agility on every catch, which no other fishing method does.

What is the best fishing money maker in OSRS? Minnows lead on raw gp per hour at roughly 250,000 to 450,000, though they demand constant attention. Anglerfish trail slightly on profit but offer far better AFK time.

Do I need the Angler outfit? It gives only a 2.5 percent xp boost, but that saves an estimated 30 to 40 hours over a full 1-99 grind, so most players find the 6 to 8 hour Fishing Trawler investment worth it.

Is fishing good for ironman accounts? Yes, it is one of the most important skills on an iron. Karambwan, anglerfish and sacred eels cover food and supply needs that a main account would simply buy from the Grand Exchange.