40d:Fishing

Fishing 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 the cave river, the outside river, or the swamps (i.e., outdoor lakes) 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 leaves behind bone and shell which your craftsdwarves can use to make trade goods, armour, and ammunition.

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. 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!

Fishing is a dangerous activity as they can run up against the deadly, deadly carp.