OSRS IronFish to Level
How many fish and how many hours to your target Fishing level, for every spot including deep sea trawling.
Barbarian fishing gets you from level 60 to level 99 fastest.
About 261.1 hours and 198,358 fish (52,464 leaping sturgeon, 63,446 leaping salmon, 82,449 leaping trout), averaging roughly 48,879 XP an hour over the climb.
| Spot | XP/h | Fish | Hours | Cooking XP | Overhead |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Barbarian fishing FastestBarbarian rod · Barbarian Training Banks at Barbarian Outpost bank chest, 52 ticks a trip. 245/h leaping salmon, 363/h leaping trout Leaves you with 52,464 leaping sturgeon, 63,446 leaping salmon, 82,449 leaping trout | 35,317 | 198,358 | 261.1 | — | 19.5% |
Fly fishing Fly fishing rod and feathers Banks at Seers' Village bank booth, 43 ticks a trip. 254/h salmon, 376/h trout Leaves you with 94,650 raw salmon, 122,705 raw trout | 36,552 | 217,354 | 285.7 | 17,107,850 | 16.7% |
Harpooning (tuna and swordfish) Harpoon Banks at Catherby bank booth, 42 ticks a trip. 113/h swordfish, 138/h tuna Leaves you with 67,938 raw swordfish, 74,588 raw tuna | 22,362 | 142,525 | 406.8 | 16,970,120 | 6.5% |
Lobster cage Lobster pot Banks at Catherby bank booth, 42 ticks a trip. 224/h lobster Leaves you with 141,786 raw lobster | 20,198 | 141,786 | 435.0 | 17,014,320 | 5.8% |
Bait Fishing rod and fishing bait Banks at Draynor deposit box, 19 ticks a trip. 377/h herring, 362/h sardine Leaves you with 277,603 raw herring, 221,631 raw sardine | 18,551 | 499,234 | 559.6 | 22,745,390 | 8.7% |
Small net Small fishing net Banks at Draynor deposit box, 19 ticks a trip. 315/h anchovies, 408/h shrimps Leaves you with 251,857 raw anchovies, 268,645 raw shrimps | 16,667 | 520,501 | 606.9 | 15,615,060 | 8.5% |
Big net Big fishing net Banks at Catherby bank booth, 44 ticks a trip. 99/h bass Leaves you with 127,607 raw bass | 9,884 | 127,607 | 897.8 | 16,588,910 | 2.7% |
| Not yet: unlocks as you level, and priced from its own level rather than yours | |||||
Trawling: marlin Trawling net · from level 91 · Sailing 56 · Sailing activity 613/h marlin | 40,690 | — | — | — | 1.9% |
Monkfish Small fishing net · from level 62 · Swan Song Banks at Arnold Lydspor, 21 ticks a trip, but that route needs Swan Song, so it is priced as if you had it. 336/h monkfish | 40,349 | — | — | — | 4.4% |
Trawling: bluefin Trawling net · from level 87 · Sailing 56 · Sailing activity 673/h bluefin | 37,101 | — | — | — | 2.1% |
Trawling: halibut Trawling net · from level 83 · Sailing 56 · Sailing activity 703/h halibut | 34,357 | — | — | — | 2.2% |
Trawling: yellowfin Trawling net · from level 79 · Sailing 56 · Sailing activity 733/h yellowfin | 28,489 | — | — | — | 2.3% |
Karambwan Karambwan vessel · from level 65 · Tai Bwo Wannai Trio Banks at Shayzien bank chest, 64 ticks a trip. 502/h karambwan | 25,125 | — | — | — | 19.9% |
Trawling: haddock Trawling net · from level 73 · Sailing 56 · Sailing activity 763/h haddock | 24,500 | — | — | — | 2.4% |
Trawling: giant krill Trawling net · from level 69 · Sailing 56 · Sailing activity 792/h giant krill | 22,286 | — | — | — | 2.5% |
Dark crab Lobster pot and dark fishing bait · from level 85 Notes at Piles, 18 ticks a trip. 166/h dark crab | 21,534 | — | — | — | 1.8% |
Anglerfish Fishing rod and sandworms · from level 82 Banks at Piscarilius bank booth, 30 ticks a trip. 142/h anglerfish | 16,981 | — | — | — | 2.6% |
Harpooning (shark) Harpoon · from level 76 Banks at Fishing Guild deposit box, 18 ticks a trip. 123/h shark | 13,562 | — | — | — | 1.4% |
A fishing spot does not roll one fish. It rolls the best one it can and only falls through to the next on a failure, so a harpoon spot at level 50 gives you swordfish first and tuna with what is left over. The per hour figures below already account for that.
Catch chance climbs as you train, so the number of fish to a target is worked out one level at a time rather than by dividing the experience gap by today's rate. Dividing would overstate a long grind.
An inventory is 27 catches, leaving a slot for the tool or bait, and a fish barrel doubles that because it holds 28 more. Dropping costs one tick a fish and a barrel does nothing there, because a barrel only empties at a bank. Banking costs a round trip priced from the wiki's own model: running covers two tiles a tick, so the trip out and back costs one tick for every tile of the one way distance, plus five ticks at the bank itself. Each row is sent to the fastest bank run your level and your unlocks allow, and the line under the spot name says which one it picked.
The Cooking XP column is what the kept haul would pay if you cooked all of it, using this site's own Cooking data, and it assumes nothing burns. It dashes when the catch is dropped, because a dropped fish is worth nothing, and on barbarian fishing, whose leaping fish are cookable in game but are not in the Cooking catalog here, so they are left out rather than counted as a zero.
Deep sea trawling pays experience ONCE PER HAUL, however many fish the net brings up, so its fish column runs far ahead of its experience column and that is the game rather than a rounding error. The community figure of 700 to 900 marlin an hour is this same haul rate times a cotton net times a crewmate baiting the shoal, and the guide it comes from says two people; solo and unbaited, these rows are what one player gets. Fish counts use the net's maximum, which the wiki publishes as a ceiling with no distribution below it, so treat the fish column as an upper bound. Trawling does stop: the hold carries ten fish per crate, and filling it means sailing to a bank boat and back, estimated at three minutes because the wiki does not publish one. A basic sloop holds four hundred fish, so that trip is a few percent of the hour; a rosewood hold outlasts most sessions.
Tick manipulation is not modelled, so these are ordinary rates rather than the fastest the game allows. Lantern harpooned squid and the big net's cod and mackerel are missing because the wiki publishes no catch chance for them, and a rate cannot be derived from a level and an experience value alone.
About the Fish to Level calculator
Which fishing spot reaches your target Fishing level soonest, how many fish you land on the way, and what each spot pays per hour at your level. Catch chance is worked out at every level you pass through, so the answer accounts for a spot speeding up as you train rather than freezing today's rate for the whole grind.
How the catch model works
The OSRS Wiki publishes two numbers per fish, one for level 1 and one for level 99, and the chance a roll lands interpolates between them at your level with the game's standard skilling success function. How often a spot rolls is published per fish rather than shared across all of them: lobsters, tuna, swordfish, shark and the big net roll every six ticks, rod and small net catches every five, and karambwan every four.
A spot rolls the best fish it can and only falls through to the next on a failure, so a harpoon spot pays swordfish first and tuna with what is left over. Treating each fish as its own roll would overstate the rare one and inflate the total at the same time.
Dropping against banking
An inventory is 27 catches, leaving one slot for the tool or bait. Dropping costs one tick a fish, which is the game's own shift drop speed. A fish barrel holds 28 more, so a banking trip becomes 54 catches, or 55 with the fish sack barrel. The barrel only empties at a bank, so it does nothing at all while you drop.
Banking is not one flat number. Every spot carries its own round trip, built from the model the wiki publishes: you cover two tiles a tick at a run, so the trip out and back costs one tick per one way tile, and the bank itself costs five. Dark crab is the exception that notes rather than banks, at Piles in the Wilderness Resource Area.
Each row is then sent to the fastest spot you can actually reach, worked out from your Fishing level and the boxes you ticked under what you have unlocked. That is why a cage row jumps at Fishing 68: the Fishing Guild opens and its trip is under half of Catherby's. The line under each spot name says which bank the row was priced against.
Sailing and deep sea trawling
The six trawling shoals are included, from giant krill at 69 up to marlin at 91, using the catch chance the wiki publishes for a trawling net and its passive three tick interval.
Trawling pays experience once per haul, however many fish the net brings up. That is why its fish column runs so far ahead of its experience column, and it is the game rather than a rounding error. A hemp net brings up four fish a haul and a cotton net five, so the net you pick moves the fish count and leaves the hours alone.
This is also what explains the figure people quote. Seven to nine hundred marlin an hour is the same haul rate with a cotton net and a crewmate baiting the shoal, which adds a fifth again, and the guide it comes from states a two person setup. Solo and unbaited, these rows are what one player gets. The fish counts use each net's published maximum, so read them as a ceiling; the hours do not depend on it.
Catch chances, experience values and level requirements verified against the OSRS Wiki on 2026-08-15. Static data, no live lookups.