Fishing

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This article discussed Fishing in general. See also Interceptor Fishing for how this applies specifically to hunting interceptors.

What is Fishing?

Fishing means killing something expensive ridiculously easily with a cheap ship that is supposedly inferior. There are many ways to do this, and i will try and teach you some of the basics and hopefully some more advanced stuff as well. Many people think fishing only refers to killing Interceptors with T1 frigates, but that's not true!

How do i do it?

The most important part of fishing imo, is dictating the terms of the engagement, which is also why fishing is such a good way to practice for other forms of pvp. It requires a lot of situational awareness and ability to get the enemy to engage you at terms favorable to you. You also need a suitable ship and some practice.

Cool, can you be a little more specific?

Sure! The easiest targets for fishing is the interceptor. Lots of inty pilots are cocky and believe that their T2 ship is vastly superior to anything T1, and will engage a T1 frigate without a second thought. They usually have no tank and very little gank (except the Taranis, claw and Crusader, they are nasty, and after the rocket buff, the malediction might be a problem too) In order to fish properly, we need to use this arrogance to our advantage, and lure them into a trap. There are many ways to do this, but let's look at ships first.

Ok, show me the money!

To fit up a fishing ship, you need a combination of the following:
a. Range dictation
b. Tank
c. Gank

Range dictation implies you need at least three midslots, so that you can fit the holy trinity: Scram, Web and Afterburner. Tank means you need enough tank to survive taking the enemy down. For Gallente ships, which i prefer, a DC and a 200mm plate is usually enough, but a 400mm plate is godly. Regarding Gank, aim for around 80-100 dps or so, you need to be able to kill them reasonably fast, before help arrives.
My personal favorite is the Tristan, but all races except amarr have good fishing frigates (lack of midslots). For advanced work, some people swear to the Helios, but I'm not going to go into that here.

Cool, but why is this range dictation thing so important?

Range dictation is the most important of the three as without it, your target will simply run away. You need to be able to keep them there, so you can kill them. Most inties have MWDs and get stuck when you scram/web them. The AB is really only to add insult to injury, or in case of a DP taranis.

Ok, so tell me about some tactics.

First of all, you need to be good with the directional scanner. We're looking for solo interceptors or inties ahead of their main fleet, and you need to find them. I usually go gate to gate and look for targets, but the danger here is that you can run into gatecamps and die horribly. If you find an interceptor on a gate, and you don't think there's a huge gang on the other side, just lock him up and see what happens. More often than not, he will agress you at short range, and you can scram/web/dead him. If he doesn't agress, but just locks you up, chances are he wants to be able to follow you through the gate. You then have two options:
1. Go through and get the engagement on the other side
2. Align to a celestial and attempt to warp off. This forces him to either agress you or follow you, and saves you the danger of going through the gate into a potential gatecamp.

Sweet, but I've only got a short while and don't wanna run too far from my home system...

No worries, just warp around between gates to TACs or at 100km if you know there's no bubbles. An interceptor is sure to be at one of the gates at some point. If you're sitting 100km off a gate with an interceptor, or preferably a whole gang of slower ships, you have a few choices:

1. Align and warp off to an obvious celestial after letting him burn to about 40km off you. Many inties will follow you on the warp and few are clever enough to not land at 0, letting you kill them. The only worry here is their friends, but if you pick a celestial more than 20 AU off, most slower ships will not have time to follow you there before you kill the inty. Make sure to watch d-scan to see what is following. If the target warps in at 20 or so you might be in trouble. To counter this, have another celestial preselected, so you can hit warp-to as soon as you see the inty landing off you. Repeat this enough, and they will warp in at 0. If he has friends following directly behind on d-scan, you can do this too, to drag him further off his slow-alligning friends. Having a bubble properly anchored at your pre-determined celestial will mitigate his ability to warp in at range.
2. Let him burn to you and scram/web/dead him in front of his friends who are out of miniwarp-range. This is pretty advanced, and there's a couple of things to watch out for:
a. He spirals in, instead of burning straight for you - warp off to a celestial as per 1, this guy knows his garlic.
b. Logistics ships or jammers on the gate. These will make it impossible to kill the target.
c. Sniper ships in the gang. If these are present, you're already dead by the time he reaches you.

What are the preferred targets, and what targets should i be wary of?

1. When starting out, go for fleet interceptors. They usually have no means of dictating range except their MWD, no tank and very little gank, but tend to forget this when zooming around.
2. Combat interceptors are fun to fish, but can be dangerous. The Crusader and Crow usually crumble fast at short range, but the Claw and especially the Taranis are potentially lethal opponents.
3. Dramiels and other ridiculously expensive faction stuff. The Dramiel is very hard to fish with frigates, as it has enough speed, tank and gank to kill you or escape, almost regardless of what you can fit. This means you need something bigger, bringing us to the next section...

Hey, are there other advanced tactics you've picked up while hunting inties in 0.0?

Yes, in fact there are...
1. I'm usually dualboxing with a prober alt, and he has punted me onto inties sitting still above gates many times. It's risky, as they often power out of range, but you can land some sweet kills too.
2. The Celestis! I cannot thank Kenda enough for putting me onto this ship. With five mids, a cruiser sized tank, 8 small drones and four highslots, it's the ultimate fishing machine, only rivaled by the Bellicose or the Mammoth... Fit with dual web, scram, track, afterburner and small neut, this ship can kill anything, even Vagas (although you need to swap the neut for a NOS and put double tracks instead of webs). Fly it like a noob, and you will find endless opportunities for killing careless pilots. Assault frigates, Dramiels, Daredevils, Worms, whatever, they all die to the Celestis.
3. The Helios! "THE WHAT?" I hear you say?? Well let's have a look. 175 DPS with blasters, or 120 with rails. 4,300 EHP. And we mentioned the "holy trinity" earlier - of AB, scram, and web. Well, the Helios has 5 mid slots, so you have AB, scram, web, and two tracks... Or if you fancy roaming, MWD, scram, dual web (making sure you can dictate range) and a single track. You can take on most T1 frigates, Inties, and AF's in it. In fact it will take a Zealot if you manage to make your approach correctly and land tackle and get in a tight orbit without dying first. It's nemesis is anything that uses a lot of drones, so stay away from Ishkurs, and to a lesser extent, Dramiels. They can be killed, but are damn tough. Tactics depend on fit - the bait is usually sitting at 70-100 off a gate and waiting for the hostile to come to you, then once you have them tackled, either keep at range 7,000m (rails) or orbit 1,000 (blasters). I prefer rails these days, unless I am hunting bigger ships, at which time the blasters prevail with their better DPS and tracking at point blank range.