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Comment by jjanchan

The Rare fish Thorned Flounder can be fished in Val'sharah up with the help of Drowned Thistleleaf.

Drowned Thistleleaf is an item that will summon a Drowned Thistleleaf, which grants the buff Blessing of the Thistleleaf, increasing your chance to fish up Thorned Flounder.

There are a number of Rare fish in Legion, and items (bait or otherwise) that will help you catch them.
The Rare fish and items to catch them are zone specific (although some are obtainable on any shoreline of the Broken Isles).

Rare Fish

There are 18 rare fish coming in Legion that can be fished up. Each rare fish grants +5 to Fishing skill when used, consuming it in the process.

There are 3 Rare fish per zone, and 3 that can be caught on any coastal waters.
These can be fished up from a Fishing skill of 1, so this can be an effective way to power level Fishing.
Catching one of the rare fish listed below while fishing will grant the achievement A Cast Above the Rest. Catching them all will grant the achievement Bigger Fish to Fry, which is a requirement to get the Underlight Angler Fishing Artifact Weapon.
All Rare fish are Bind on Pickup.
If you are fishing with the Underlight Angler equipped, you will obtain a DIFFERENT version of each rare fish that grants Artifact Power instead of Fishing skill (e.g. you would fish up Coldriver Carp instead of Coldriver Carp)

Note that this does not retroactively apply to rare fish you obtained before getting the Artifact - the only use for these short of maxing fishing skill is vendoring for a decent chunk of change.

The Rare fish in the chart below are marked with a star (*)

Fishing Bait and Items

Some of the items that help you catch Rare fish will spawn and NPC that grants a fishing buff; others contain bait, or spawn NPCs that drop bait.

All fishing bait buffs last for 2 minutes once used (except for Rusty Queenfish Brooch and Ancient Vrykul Ring, which last 5 minutes each).
All buffs last the full duration, except for Moosehorn Hook, which expires as soon as you catch a bait.
Almost all baits can be bought/sold on the Auction House. Use this if you are having trouble with a particular fish!

The exception to this is the Stunned, Angry Shark, which has a 1 minute duration in your inventory.

All baits are Unique, meaning you can only carry one. The further caveat to this is that you WILL NOT catch any bait that is currently in your inventory!

This can be used to your advantage if you are looking for a particular bait in a zone - by having certain baits in your bags, you will ensure you do not catch them again.
If you are wanting to obtain multiples of the same bait, you can put baits on the Auction House, mail them to an alt, or put them into a Guild Bank or Guild Bank Tab that only you have access to. This will allow you to catch the same bait again.

A portable mailbox like MOLL-E (Engineering) or GUMM-E (from the Draenor garrison Engineering Workshop) is a huge boon when doing this out in the field!

It is worthwhile saving some rare fish bait, in order to level Artifact Power on your Underlight Angler if and when you get it.

Items and Rare Fish by Zone

Highmountain	Val'sharah
Item	Used to Obtain	Item	Used to Obtain

Drowned Thistleleaf

Funky Sea Snail (1)	Salmon Lure	Rotten Fishbone (3)	Ancient Mossgill*
Salmon Lure	Ancient Highmountain Salmon*	Nightmare Nightcrawler	Terrorfin*
Frost Worm	Coldriver Carp*	Drowned Thistleleaf (4)	Thorned Flounder*
Swollen Murloc Egg (2)	Mountain Puffer*

Azsuna	Suramar
Item	Used to Obtain	Item	Used to Obtain

Skrog Toenail (5)	Aromatic Murloc Slime	Enchanted Lure	Magic-Eater Frog*
Aromatic Murloc Slime	Leyshimmer Blenny*	Demonic Detritus	Tainted Runescale Koi*
Pearlescent Conch	Nar'thalas Hermit*	Sleeping Murloc (7)	Seerspine Puffer*
Rusty Queenfish Brooch (6)	Ghostly Queenfish*

Stormheim	All Coastal Legion Waters
Item	Used to Obtain	Item	Used to Obtain

Moosehorn Hook (8)	Silverscale Minnow Soggy Drakescale	Message in a Beer Bottle (10)	Axefish Lure
Axefish Lure	Axefish*
Silverscale Minnow	Thundering Stormray*	Stunned, Angry Shark (11)	Seabottom Squid*
Ancient Vrykul Ring (9)	Oodelfjisk*	Decayed Whale Blubber (12)	Ravenous Fly
Soggy Drakescale	Graybelly Lobster*	Ravenous Fly	Ancient Black Barracuda*

Notes:
* Indicates a Rare fish
(1) Funky Sea Snail is an item that will summon a Bitestone Fishbrul that drops a Salmon Lure when killed.
(2) Swollen Murloc Egg is an item that will spawn a Murloc NPC, Swamprock Tadpole, that grants the buff Blessing of the Murlocs, increasing your chance to fish up Mountain Puffer.
(3) Rotten Fishbone is an item that will attract a Druid NPC (Lorlathil Druid) that casts the The Cat's Meow buff on you, increasing your chance to fish up Ancient Mossgill.
(4) Drowned Thistleleaf is an item that will grant the buff Blessing of the Thistleleaf, increasing your chance to fish up Thorned Flounder.
(5) Skrog Toenail is an item that will summon a Salteye Skrog-Hunter that drops a Aromatic Murloc Slime when killed.
(6) Rusty Queenfish Brooch is an item that is required to see Ghostly Queenfish pools in Azsuna.
(7) Using Sleeping Murloc will awaken a Confused Seerspine Murloc, who will run around briefly and drop some Seerspine Puffer into the water.
(8) Moosehorn Hook is an item that increases your chances to catch rare bait in Stormheim, rather than fish.
(9) Ancient Vrykul Ring is an item that is required to see Oodelfjisk pools in Stormheim.
(10) Message in a Beer Bottle contains Axefish Lure when opened.
(11) Using Stunned, Angry Shark will spawn a Landlocked Shark, which will yield Seabottom Squid when killed. Using it on land makes it much less dangerous than in water (hits quite hard).
(12) Decayed Whale Blubber is an item that attracts flies - Ravenous Fly can be looted from these.

Comment by Kraineth

You can fish this up in Val'Sharah while under the effects from Drowned Thistleleaf

Comment by SargonStarblade

Just in case anyone was wondering.

If you save up all the rare fish you collected while trying to get your Underlight Angler, like me, don't it won't work. The text is not changed once you get the Underlight Angler.

It still says:

Use: Toss the fish back into the water, increasing Fishing skill by 5, up to a max of 800.

Only new rare fish will say:

Use: Toss the fish back into the water, granting 50 Artifact Power to your fishing artifact.

Comment by Elnorr

Caught under the effect from Drowned Thistleleaf on open water near Lorathil.
You have 5 minutes when you click the bait.

Comment by KikkTheGnome

Caught 9 while under the effects of the five-minute buff in Mistvale (around 72, 36). First came from a mossgill perch school; the rest were from open casts (no pool).

Comment by Cimegs5088

I got the bait while trying to farm for fishbone for Ancient Mosegill around 72,41 (there are 4-5 pools around the temple there, where you keep fishing round and round because the respawn is decently quick) - in fact, i got all 3 of the rare fishes (and their bait) while doing the round there (got all of them within 4 rounds of fishing in that area so i suppose it's a good area to fish for this zone's rare fish) - and within the 5min buff, i got 18 thorned flounders just from open water, so i suppose it has a rather high drop rate with bait buff.

Comment by RiokaR

After returning to the game and trying this, I was frustrated to realise I already had some of the lures in my bank, and as they are unique, I ended up wasting too much time fishing for nothing. This macro will check if you have an item hidden away in your bags or bank.

/run local id = "133708" local countBags = GetItemCount(id) local countTotal = GetItemCount(id, true) print(GetItemInfo(id)..":", countBags, "(bags)", (countTotal - countBags), "(bank)")

Drowned Thistleleaf: 0 (bags) 1 (bank)

You simply need to change the id to the correct item id you are searching for.

Zone	Item Name	Item ID
Azsuna	Skrog Toenail	133701
Azsuna	Aromatic Murloc Slime	133702
Azsuna	Pearlescent Conch	133703
Azsuna	Rusty Queenfish Brooch	133704
Val'sharah	Rotten Fishbone	133705
Val'sharah	Nightmare Nightcrawler	133707
Val'sharah	Drowned Thistleleaf	133708
Highmountain	Funky Sea Snail	133709
Highmountain	Salmon Lure	133710
Highmountain	Swollen Murloc Egg	133711
Highmountain	Frost Worm	133712
Stormheim	Moosehorn Hook	133713
Stormheim	Silverscale Minnow	133714
Stormheim	Ancient Vrykul Ring	133715
Stormheim	Soggy Drakescale	133716
Suramar	Enchanted Lure	133717
Suramar	Sleeping Murloc	133719
Suramar	Demonic Detritus	133720
The Great Sea	Message in a Beer Bottle	133721
The Great Sea	Axefish Lure	133722
The Great Sea	Stunned, Angry Shark	133723
The Great Sea	Decayed Whale Blubber	133724
The Great Sea	Ravenous Fly	133795

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Thorned Flounder

Item Level 40
Binds when picked up

Use: Toss the fish back into the water, increasing your Legion Fishing skill by 5, up to a max of 100.
Requires Level 39
"Covered with spines, from gill to tail."

Max Stack: 1000

Sell Price: 10

Fishing Locations

This item can be fished in Val'sharah (138) and The Dreamgrove (4).

Guides

Legion Fishing Guide Legion Fishing Artifact The Underlight Angler - A Step by Step Guide to Obtaining Legion's Fishing Artifact

Thorned Flounder

Fishing Locations

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