Fishing schools in shallow water
I have encountered several fishing schools that I could not cast into because the water was too shallow.
How can I catch the fish in schools of fish that reside in shallow water?
I did some research and found the following post on the forums
Fishing pools in too shallow water
This is a single post that mentions an occurrence of this phenomena in the vicinity of "Lost veil anzu" in the Spires of Arak. I have not been fishing in that place myself. Most recently I encountered this near to "Mok'gol watchpost" in Nagrand, I have also noticed it in several other places so I do not think that it is a feature of a specific place.
Best Answer
This has been a minor problem in WoW going back to when they introduced fishing pools in the first place.
Pools spawn in predetermined spots just like other resource nodes do. There's enough of those spots that it looks mostly random. Problem is, those spots aren't always placed precisely for usability. I don't know what Blizzard's internal tools are like, but I imagine they just spray dots on the map and run a basic point-check to validate it. Once it's in game, the fishing mechanic doesn't care that the pool is right there, it just cares that wherever your bobber landed, doesn't work.
Chances are, unless it's way out of whack, some portion of a "too shallow" pool is in a valid area and can actually be fished. Whether that's a large portion or a small depends on the spot though. It would be up to you whether it's worth your time to find the exact positioning needed to try your luck at landing the bobber in it though.
I don't have clear sources except experience - Blizzards response over the years seems to treat each pool as an individual bug - but there are more threads like the one you found (trying to find more, but it gets drowned out with general complaints about fishing).
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Fishing Top Water Lures around surface schools of feeding bait fish
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