40d:Fishing

Fishing is the labor used to catch fish. It is an excellent source of food (and some raw materials) in the early game, though its usefulness diminishes somewhat as your fortress grows.

Any dwarf with the Fisherdwarf labor enabled will fish, either in a cave river, an outside river, the swamps (i.e., outdoor lakes, murky pools) or artificial lakes connected to the river. Fisherdwarves can catch various kinds of fish, as well as other aquatic creatures like turtles. Turtles can be very useful to a starting fortress, since eating them uncooked leaves behind bone and shell which your craftsdwarves can use to make trade goods, armour, and ammunition.

Fishing requires no equipment, as Fisherdwarves have developed a highly superior fishing method. When tasked, the dwarf will go out to a body of water he has picked and wade in knee deep. The dwarf then simply lowers his prestigious beard into the water and waits. Inevitably a fish will arrive, attracted by the remains of the dwarf's last meal still lodged in his beard. When the fish makes the fatal error of attempting to acquire this morsel, it is hopelessly entangled.(In some kobold societies they fish exclusively with nets made from dwarf beard hair.) The only flaw in this method is that devilish carp have learned to drag dwarves into rivers by their beard. In some instances, when the carp rips out a significant portion of the Fisherdwarf's beard, he will simply allow himself to drown. Most dwarves see this as more honorable than returning home in horrible beardless shame.

Overfishing can exhaust the fish population of a pond or river temporarily. For this reason, it may be advisable to keep your fishing below a certain limit if you rely on fishing as a major food source.

Note that the game considers fishing a very high-priority labour, meaning that fisherdwarves will often waste time fishing, usually at the expense of more urgent tasks that need doing. It is sometimes a good idea to turn Fishing off for a while so that your dwarves can work on other tasks. However extremely skilled fisherdwarves can produce a really immense amount of turtle which can either be tossed near the water in horrible rotting piles or end up in your food store.

Swamp-fishing can draw your dwarves far away from the safety of the fortress. If your map has a lot of dangerous wildlife, you may want to consider assigning guard dogs to your fisherdwarves, or post a military squad near each lake.

Fish cannot be eaten as soon as it is caught; it must be cleaned in a fishery first. (An exception is the raw mussel, which can be cooked at a kitchen instead of cleaned at a fishery). Again, even if your fisherdwarves have the Fish Cleaning labor turned on, they may prefer to keep fishing rather than clean the fish that they've already caught. (Can you blame them?) More than one dwarf has starved to death because of this: don't let it happen to you!