How to Set Up an AFK Fishing Bot in Minecraft

An AFK fishing bot casts, waits for a bite, reels in and casts again for as long as you leave it, and it piles up fish, enchanted books, name tags and experience while you're away. In the game, that takes an AFK fish farm, your mouse button held down, the game open and your PC on. A Minecraft bot reels in on the bite itself, so it fishes in any open water and keeps going with your PC off.

How fishing works

Every cast goes the same way: the bobber lands, a fish takes anywhere from about 5 to 30 seconds to bite, and you reel in when the bobber dips. Each catch also gives a little experience, and it comes up as one of three things:

• Fish: cod, salmon, tropical fish and pufferfish, most of the time.
• Junk: sticks, string, bowls, leather boots, rotten flesh and the like.
• Treasure: enchanted books, enchanted bows and fishing rods, name tags, saddles and nautilus shells.

Fish bite sooner in the rain, and later when there's a block between the bobber and the sky, so fish somewhere open.

Where to fish

In Java Edition, treasure only comes up in open water. If the bobber has blocks around it, like the small pool of a typical fish farm, every catch is fish or junk and never a book.

Open water means the 5 by 5 area around the bobber holds nothing but water below the surface and nothing but air or lily pads above it. In practice, a pool 5 by 5 and three blocks deep is enough, and a pond or the sea is plenty. Flowing water doesn't count, so if you build your own spot, fill it with source blocks.

Get the rod right

A fishing rod has 64 uses, and every catch costs one. On a bot that fishes all day, the enchantments are what keep it going:

• Mending spends the experience from each catch repairing the rod, and a catch gives more than it costs. A Mending rod that only fishes keeps itself in repair.
• Lure takes 5 seconds off every wait for each level, up to Lure III.
• Luck of the Sea III makes treasure more likely and junk less.
• Unbreaking III makes every use count for less, which matters on a rod without Mending.

Set up a fishing bot on the web client

Walk the bot to the water first, in the POV or with Walk to, and give it the rod. Then pick one of two ways to keep it fishing.

The Fish step, in any water

The Fish macro step casts the rod in the bot's hand and reels in by itself the moment a fish bites, the way you would watching the bobber. There's no farm to build, so any open water works and treasure is on the table.

One Fish step is one cast, so repeat it with a Timer macro:

1. Create a macro on the Timer event, running every couple of seconds.
2. Add a Look step aimed at the water.
3. Add Hold item, picking the fishing rod, so the rod is always the item in hand.
4. Add Fish.

A Fish step leaves a line that's already out alone, so each pass either casts a fresh line or waits for the last one to catch something. A Timer hands the account back between passes, so anti-AFK and your other macros still get their turn.

Hold right click, at an AFK fish farm

If you've already built an AFK fish farm, the kind you stand at holding right click, the bot can do the holding. Stand it where you would stand, facing the way you would face, and tick it in Hold right click on the profile's Clicking tab. The hold is saved on the account, so it starts again by itself after a reconnect.

If water or mobs keep nudging the bot off its spot, switching physics off holds it exactly in place. Ask the server first, because some don't allow it.

Timer macros and Hold right click both need Tier 3.

Keep the inventory from filling

A bot that fishes all day fills its 36 slots, and faster than you'd think: fish stack, but boots, bows and enchanted books take a whole slot each. An Inventory full macro runs the moment the last slot fills:

• Drop all, set to an item name, throws out just that item: drop the rotten flesh, keep the books.
• A Chat step can send the server's sell command, if it has one.

To stop before a rod without Mending breaks, give the fishing macro a Tool durability stop condition. For a hold, a Tool durability macro with a Release right click step lets go at the number of uses you pick.

Is AFK fishing allowed?

That depends on the server. Plenty of survival servers are fine with AFK fish farms, some ban them, and some forbid unattended play altogether. Read the rules of the server you're on, and see Can I get banned for only AFKing?

To keep the account online in the first place, see How to AFK in Minecraft without getting kicked, and for a bot that mines instead, the guide to AFK mining bots.