RAW COD

A fishing rod over open water is the ordinary way to end up holding raw cod, and it is not the only one. Cod, dolphins and 3 other mobs drop it as well, so a pile of it can just as easily come from a fight as from a bobber sitting on the surface. No recipe produces it either way.

A Fisherman is the only one interested, and he wants it in two different ways. Reach apprentice and he buys it outright, 15 for an emerald. Long before that, at novice, he already does something else with it: he cooks it for you, for a fee.

To sell raw cod for emeralds, bring it to a Fisherman at the Apprentice tier, 15 units per emerald.

A Fisherman at the Novice tier does something different with the same item: he takes 6 raw cod and one emerald, and hands back 6 Cooked Cod. No emeralds return there at all, so it is a conversion rather than a sale, and the emerald is part of what you pay in.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 15 raw cod, from the Fisherman, and 9 of the other 10 pay out faster. No villager sells raw cod back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Fisherman takes 15 raw cod a trade, 16 trades, 16 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

16 acacia boats against 384 paper for the same 16 emeralds, 24 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Butcher at 10 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. Raw Cod itself pays 15 an emerald, so 44 of the 72 ask less and 22 ask more.

Every raw cod offer here locks after 16 uses, and a villager restocks up to twice a Minecraft day, no more.

The earliest raw cod shows up is the Fisherman's Novice tier, as the cooking swap, but the plain sale waits for Apprentice, level 2 of five. A freshly employed Fisherman is not yet offering the sale, only the conversion.

16 sales empty the apprentice slot, and 2 real minutes later it refills, the same clock a Fisherman runs on for everything he sells. A Minecraft day holds two of those refills across 20 real minutes.

One Fisherman worked through both moves 480 raw cod for 32 emeralds, no faster and no slower whether you fish the cod up yourself or already had it waiting.

One villager, one restock: bring 240 raw cod and the apprentice slot takes every last one before it locks.

Where they go back: that Fisherman also sells campfires at his cheapest offer.

Also on the Fisherman's list: cooked salmon, raw salmon, enchanted fishing rod, tropical fish, pufferfish and oak boat.

Cod is the fish of ordinary oceans, and it comes out of a fishing rod as often as it comes off a killed fish. Cooking raises what it restores, so most of a catch is worth putting through a smoker before it goes in the food chest.

The raw kind has jobs of its own. Cats and ocelots are tamed with it, dolphins follow and boost you through water when fed, and a village Fisherman buys it for emeralds. Between those three a fishing spot next to a village is one of the quieter ways to make a living in survival.

A rod pulls up three kinds of thing: fish, junk and treasure. The fish is the least of it. The treasure pool holds enchanted books, name tags, saddles and bows, and Luck of the Sea is the only enchantment that shifts your share towards it.

Fish also come off the fish themselves, and a cod killed in the water drops the same raw cod a rod would give you, so an ocean is a food supply before it is anything else.

Raw cod tames a cat and feeds a wolf, and cooking is a campfire away, which makes it the easiest food to keep topped up on a long trip by water.

Cod is the fish a rod brings up most often, so an AFK fish farm fills its chest with Raw Cod faster than with anything else. The Fisherman takes 15 Raw Cod per emerald, 240 before he restocks. The build is in How to Build an AFK Fish Farm in Minecraft.