Mereldar Fishing Derby

[npc=226846] is the host of the Hallowfall Fishing Derby, so she will only be available on Saturdays while the event is active for 24 hours.
/way #2215 44.22 61.59 Captain OathmytShe's a trainer for [skill=2876], the [currency=3055] vendor, and gives the quests for the Hallowfall Fishing Derby.
[toggler name="Hallowfall Fishing Derby" closed=true]
Every Saturday, [npc=226846] offer players one of these five quests that will reward 25x [currency=3055] for the first completion on your Warband that day:

Hallowfall Fishing Derby
Hallowfall Fishing Derby
Hallowfall Fishing Derby
Hallowfall Fishing Derby
Hallowfall Fishing Derby

• 
  
• After accepting a quest, you'll be buffed with [spell=456024] for 60 minutes. A character can not refresh that buff or get a new one that day, so you have exactly one hour to catch all the required Trophy Fish (and finish other things we can achieve while we have the buff).
  (On Beta, this was quite buggy even in the last week before Early Access, some characters never got this mandatory buff)
• 
  
• You can pause in between, the buff timer will not continue when logged out. (keep in mind that with the start of Sunday, everything will be gone)
• 
  
• The Trophy Fish required to complete these quests are no special (or extremely rare) quest items. They are regular catches we see in Khaz Algar waters all the time, but to get credit for the quest, you have to catch them with [spell=456024] active!
• 
  
• This means for the completion of a quest you should focus on getting the three required ones by fishing in the zones & pools mentioned in the following table or your Fishing Journal (when the character caught one of them before), but it's not urgent to turn in the quest, you have the full Saturday to do that.
  
  
  Fish

  Mouseover for Zone(s) and Pools

  Flagged Hidden QuestID

  Arathor Hammerfish

  [spell=444795]

  [quest=82928]

  Awoken Coelacanth

  [spell=444803]

  [quest=82936]

  Bismuth Bitterling

  [spell=444787]

  [quest=82920]

  Bloody Perch

  [spell=444785]

  [quest=82918]

  Crystalline Sturgeon

  [spell=444786]

  [quest=82919]

  [item=220152]

  [spell=444802]

  [quest=82935]

  Dilly-Dally Dace

  [spell=444792]

  [quest=82947]

  Dornish Pike

  [spell=444793]

  [quest=82926]

  Goldengill Trout

  [spell=444790]

  [quest=82923]

  Kaheti Slum Shark

  [spell=444797]

  [quest=82930]

  Nibbling Minnow

  [spell=444788]

  [quest=82921]

  Pale Huskfish

  [spell=444798]

  [quest=82931]

  Queen's Lurefish

  [spell=444801]

  [quest=82934]

  Quiet River Bass

  [spell=454443]

  [quest=82925]

  Regal Dottyback

  [spell=444796]

  [quest=82929]

  Roaring Anglerseeker

  [spell=444794]

  [quest=82927]

  Sanguine Dogfish

  [spell=444799]

  [quest=82932]

  Specular Rainbowfish

  [spell=444791]

  [quest=82924]

  Spiked Sea Raven

  [spell=444800]

  [quest=82933]

  Whispering Stargazer

  Whispering Stargazer

  [quest=82922]
  
  

[/toggler][toggler name="Fishing Derby Achievement" closed=true]

• 
  
• Tied to the Hallowfall Fishing Derby event, we have the The Derby Dash achievement with the [item=223286] reward... something you can use the remaining time of your [spell=456024] on when you got all the required Trophy Fish for your Fishing Derby quest.
• 
  
• Basically, you travel around and try to catch every fish once and turn in your Derby Quest (at least once) while the buff is active. I won't guarantee anything (because I wasn't aware until it popped, and back then we had the buff for 3 hours), but it felt like this didn't have to happen in a single attempt on the same day because I didn't turn in the quest when the achievement popped. It happened when I caught a fish (probably one I was missing in an earlier Derby). And you can probably work on it with different characters. (check Hints & Issues section)
• 
  

[/toggler][toggler name="Vendor & Currency Acquisition" closed=true]

• 
  
• One of the major reasons to do the Fishing Derby is to acquire the special [currency=3055] currency that is required to purchase items from [npc=226846].
  
  
  Item

  Cost
  ([currency=3055])

  Comments

  [item=228954]

  31 Silver 25 Copper

  [item=224717]

  500

  [item=224727]

  250

  [item=225763]

  50

  can also be fished directly

  [item=217375]

  100

  [item=226378]

  50

  [item=226376]

  50

  [item=226379]

  50

  [item=225771]

  10

  can also be fished directly

  [item=225770]

  10

  can also be fished directly

  Recipe: Ghoulfish Delight

  10

  [item=228421]

  10

  [item=225892]

  10

  [item=228423]

  10

  Hallowfall Harvester's Pitchfork

  50

  can also be fished directly

  [item=224752]

  5

  can also be fished directly
  
  
  
• 
  
• One week before Early Access, we finally saw rewards for the Fishing Derby quests, your character will now get 25x [currency=3055]. The quest is shared on your Warband, so you can only get this once per week.
• 
  
• For every unique fish caught with the [spell=456024] buff active, you will also receive 1x [currency=3055], so up to 20 per week AND character. (the latter is probably not intended, so I will mention details in the Hints & Issues section)
• 
  
• While the actual currency [currency=3055] can only be acquired on Saturdays, [item=226392] can be fished in Khaz Algar waters all the time and then be turned into the currency. But don't use them immediately, keep in mind that you can put them into your Warband bank to use them on characters without the currency to unlock the currency transfer (e.g. for recipe purchases).

[/toggler][toggler name="Hints & Issues" closed=true]

• 
  
• Fishing Derby quests are shared on your Warband, but that is not happening for [spell=456024]. This buff will only be applied to the character accepting the quest. This is pointless because it is mandatory to get credit for Trophy Fish, loot currency on unique catches, and progress on the achievement.
• 
  
• Mentioned before... during Beta, some characters never got the [spell=456024] buff, which excluded them from the event.
• 
  
• I'm not sure what was causing it, but I had massive issues catching Roaring Anglerseeker because I constantly caught Spiked Sea Raven from [object=451675] pools. I thought my character had too high Skill/Perception, but that even happened to characters who just learned Fishing. So I can only assume, that there's something bugged with these pools or the buff also changes our Skill/Perception. Unfortunately, that led to situations where I couldn't finish Hallowfall Fishing Derby because I never caught a single Roaring Anglerseeker while I had the Derby buff active (also missing the Derby Mark for this unique catch per week). So I could only abandon the quest and wait for the next week, BUT...
• 
  
• Abandoning the Fishing Derby quest revealed a probably unintended way to use an army of alts to get more of the currency: With the Derby Marks for unique catches being character-specific*, you can accept the quest on another character, check if the buff is applied correctly, and then go for as many unique fishes to collect up to 20 Derby Marks. Then you abandon the quest, switch to your next character, rinse, and repeat. And if you haven't seen issues with getting the 3 Trophy Fish, use your last character to turn in the quest for 25x Derby Marks. (but there's some risk because some characters might not get the buff until they fix that)
• 
  
• This method could also be a way to "ignore" the 60-minute buff timer to work on the The Derby Dash when its progress is really account-wide and not tied to a single Saturday attempt on one character.
• 
  

*Last Derby was available for testing 6 days before Early Access, so still plenty of time for changes to this behavior.
[/toggler]

So, every time the derby is on, there will be one "rare" pool.

If the #1 version Hallowfall Fishing Derby is on, the rare pool might be
[object=451678] → Arathor Hammerfish
[object=451680] → Queen's Lurefish
[object=451669] → Nibbling Minnow
With this version you can get the lurefish by fishing a regal dottyback out of a royal ripple and then using it to catch the lurefish. You can hope for the glimmerpool to be rare as the minnow can come from calm surfacing ripple as well. If the rare pool is blood in the water it is VERY unlikely to get the hammerfish.

If the #2 version Hallowfall Fishing Derby is on, the rare pool might be
[object=451678] → Kaheti Slum Shark
[object=451670] → Dornish Pike
[object=451670] → Dilly-Dally Dace
So on this one I'm actually not sure what's up since I'm pretty sure both the Pike and the Dace are tied to Calm Surfacing Ripple but sometimes when the Dace is rare, you can only fish it out of rotpools and the rotpools are rare, and in addition I could have sworn that last time the #4 version was up, Glimmerpools were rare even though it is more likely to get a Dace from a Calm Surfacing Ripple. You can still get them from Glimmerpools though.

If the #3 version Hallowfall Fishing Derby is on, the rare pool might be
[object=451675] → Roaring Anglerseeker
[object=451678] → Bloody Perch
[object=451670] → Spiked Sea Raven (though you can also get this from [object=451669] and even [object=451672] - as it is a blue fish, perception really helps.)
The way to do this one is to just hope the Blood in the Water is the rare pool as Bloody Perch are white fish and a dime a dozen. They will come up anywhere.

If the #4 version Hallowfall Fishing Derby is on, the rare pool might be
[object=451672] → Whispering Stargazer (but you can also get it from [object=451682] it's just a rare result and many of these pools disappear after one cast)
[object=451669] → Bismuth Bitterling
[object=451680] → Regal Dottyback
On this one if the Stargazer Swarm is rare there's not a lot of hope, and the times I've done it, it has been. I almost want to say if you're stuck on the stargazer just fish in open water and pray.

If the #5 version Hallowfall Fishing Derby is on, the rare pool might be
[object=451669] → Specular Rainbowfish
[object=451678] → Sanguine Dogfish
[object=451670] → Crystalline Sturgeon
With this version it's important to realise that the sanguine dogfish comes out of the blood in the water and have a lot of perception to get the blue dogfish instead of the green slum shark. If the dogfish is rare your best pet is to also carry multiples of 10 Bloody Perch to stack the bloody perch buff to 10, increasing your chances to get the dogfish. (Interesting tidbit, a dogfish is not a piranha like the icon shows, but a shark. Frankly I think the sanguine dogfish actually represents a cookie-cutter shark or something similar.)

So here's my experience. I spent 450 Artisan's Acuity getting the good fishing rod with the special line.

And even with the [item=221791] at max quality, the [item=225729] equipped, and 300 fishing I have failed the fishing tournament every time. This, mind you, is while having the old items such as [item=50287] and [item=117405] though to be honest I'm actually not sure if either of these do any good. Also had the [item=225855] but I can't stress enough how important it is to be a Pandaren for fishing this expac, since their racial absolutely does apply and doubles that food buff from +30 fishing skill to +60, as well as the perception, and unfortunately I am not one.

This time I thought I got lucky because the rare pool happened to be the Glimmerpool and I happen to have skinning, granting me the ability to make [item=219002]. Yes the buff disappears and yes I know this so I simply made sure I had 200 Dilly-Dally Dace so I could make and reapply whenever it disappeared. It doesn't always disappear every cast but it does disappear often and you have to keep track of it.

The lure did nothing, I failed to catch a rainbowfish, and I still have not succeeded in completing the tournament. Since there are five versions and at this point I know I will not get the rare fish even in the 1/15 case that the Rainbowfish pool is the rare pool, there's no point in trying for a completion.

At this point I will only be going for the roughly 15 marks you can get from each unique fish you catch during the tournament. Various objects like coreway screwdrivers and careless dasher's treasure can be caught, but no longer count as a unique fish and thus no longer provide a derby mark, though they used to. Only actual fish are unique fish and will provide a mark, so make sure you get one of each. The ghoulfish and huskfish do count, though, so if you see an ichor spill, go for it at least until you get a huskfish.

You're wrong about the nibbling minnow...its from calm surfacing ripple. I fished for almost the whole time in the glimmering pools til I googled nibbling minnow. You should verify your posts.