How do I fish?

[Heater]

I've constructed a complete fishing rod, but was unable to find any fishing spots. I thus resigned myself to fishing in just water, which has worked for me before in farming for LPs. However, one thing that I notice is that my character suddenly stops fishing from time to time. This happens so often that my hunger has gone from 80% to 20% hungry without getting a single LP. What am I doing wrong?

[VileThings]

Your character will keep fishing if there are fish in the river/lake and stop fishing after one tick if not. Watch out for jumping fish in the water, you only find fish there.

[Swordmage]

Also, if there are fish around, you get LP even if you don't catch one on any given tick. Again, boat around looking for the jumping fish.

[Heater]

I finally found fish, but is it true that you can only catch certain fish at certain times? And is it also true that they can attack you? If so, can I drown from this in deep water? Also, is there a definitive "rule of thumb" to go by when determining what FEPs are best for me? FIsh appear to be extremely useful in raising skills and lowering hunger, but if they raise the wrong stats, it might not be good. Are there any special skills which I should work on avoiding?

[VileThings]

I finally found fish, but is it true that you can only catch certain fish at certain times? And is it also true that they can attack you? If so, can I drown from this in deep water? Also, is there a definitive "rule of thumb" to go by when determining what FEPs are best for me? FIsh appear to be extremely useful in raising skills and lowering hunger, but if they raise the wrong stats, it might not be good. Are there any special skills which I should work on avoiding?

The type of fish you can catch is tied to the time of day and, at night, the phase of the moon. I never heard of fish attacking someone though, this isn't Dwarf Fortress after all

As for the FEP, I have only caught about 4-5 different fishes myself so far, but Brill, Pike and Sturgeon are good for raising your strength, Perch for intelligence and Eel for agility.

[Heater]

Oh, thank you for the information. Now I don't have to worry about fish attacking and drowning me

However, I wonder if fishing spots can be depleted through overfishing. Is this possible?

[Swordmage]

As far as which stats to raise, you might as well raise them all and it is a bit easier if you try to keep the useful ones at about the same level. The reason for raising them all is that the number of FEP needed for the next attribute point is determined by the highest stat -- so if you want to raise str, con, perc, and agi to 50 (just an example), you use a lot more food if you raise one to 50 and then the rest than if you raise them at about the same rate.