RAW SALMON

A fishing rod over open water is the ordinary route to raw salmon, and polar bears drop it too, which matters more than it sounds since the same cold biomes that hold salmon shoals also hold the bears. No recipe produces it either way, only the line and the fight.

A Fisherman wants it in two different shapes. At apprentice, he cooks it for a fee rather than paying for it outright. Reach journeyman instead, further along his climb, and he finally buys it straight, 13 raw salmon for an emerald.

To sell raw salmon for emeralds, bring it to a Fisherman at the Journeyman tier, 13 units per emerald.

A Fisherman at the Apprentice tier takes 6 raw salmon and one emerald instead, and hands back 6 Cooked Salmon. No emeralds come back out there, so it is a conversion rather than a sale.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 13 raw salmon, from the Fisherman, and 8 of the other 10 pay out faster. No villager sells raw salmon back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Fisherman takes 13 raw salmon a trade, 16 trades, 16 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

16 acacia boats against 384 flint for the same 16 emeralds, 24 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Fisherman at 10 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. Raw Salmon itself pays 13 an emerald, so 41 of the 72 ask less and 30 ask more.

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

The earliest raw salmon shows up is the Fisherman's Apprentice tier, as the cooking swap, but the plain sale waits for Journeyman, level 3 of five. A freshly employed Fisherman offers neither yet.

16 sales empty the journeyman 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 416 raw salmon for 32 emeralds, the same ceiling no matter how the fish were caught.

One villager, one restock: bring 208 raw salmon and the journeyman 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: enchanted fishing rod, tropical fish, pufferfish, oak boat, spruce boat and jungle boat.

Salmon spawn small, normal and large in rivers and cold oceans, but the size only changes how the fish looks while it swims. Killed or caught, every one of them drops the same raw salmon, so there is no reason to hunt the big ones.

Where it does differ from cod is what eats it. Cats and ocelots are tamed with raw fish, and dolphins hand out a burst of speed in water when fed. Cooking it raises what it restores, so the useful split is to keep a few raw for the animals and cook the rest.

Raw salmon is one of the two fish a cat will accept to be tamed, and it is what a stray cat near a village will follow. Wolves eat it too and heal from it, which makes a stack of fish a practical thing to carry with a pack.

The axolotl is the exception people trip over: it will not take loose salmon at all, only a bucket of tropical fish, so a bucket is the item to bring for those.

Cooked, salmon restores more than cod, and a campfire does the job with no fuel and no furnace, which suits a fishing trip better than carrying a stack of coal.

Raw Salmon is the second most common fish on a rod, behind cod. The Fisherman buys it from Journeyman on, 13 Raw Salmon to the emerald, so a farm that fishes while you idle keeps him stocked: How to Build an AFK Fish Farm in Minecraft.