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[Bartok]

I accidentally fished out my river...  Will it ever recover?

I've currently set my fisher dwarves to hauling tasks, but if it's a lost cause, I should probably allocate them to other things, like woodcutting, and butchery.  Slaughtering baby animals should keep my bone supplies up, and there apparently can never be too much charcoal...

[Rowanas]

they are vermin, and because vermin population is sickeningly high you're fine. They'll respawn and you can fish them.

[Bartok]

OK.

So give it a few more seasons basically.  I tried a few months off, but the no fish message came up.

Thanks.

[Jim Groovester]

Fish populations can be completely depleted. It takes a while, but it does happen.

If you have idle fisherdwarves, you probably don't have any fish left.

[Quietust]

It's also possible that they're fishing in the wrong places. When my fort first got fisherdwarf immigrants, they got tons of turtles from the nearby murky pools for a while (to the point that my garbage dump was overflowing with shells and I had to atomsmash about a hundred of them) before they stopped altogether (and I've now taken to importing turtles and cave lobsters). Now they only bring in char and steelhead trout from the brook (which is thankfully still marked as fishable), though I suspect that'll eventually be gone too.

[awdball]

Each season there is a refresh to the supply in murky pools and the like of the vermin fish and turtles.

AWDBall

[Albedo]

I accidentally fished out my river...  Will it ever recover?

There are 2 types of "fish" - creatures and vermin. 

Creatures have to breed - get pregnant, have offspring, etc - takes a while, often too long.  Vermin just "appear" in/near their native biome - which is often just "water".

See wiki on "creatures", "fish" and "vermin" for full info.

[Quietust]

A bit of a bump, but I should add that my fort's brook and swamps have been totally devoid of marine life for the past 4 years - every time the season changes, my former fisherdwarves (retrained as legendary siege operators) head out to the brook and the pools and quickly give me 3 reports of "There was nothing to catch", so it is very possible to fish all of the natural fishing sources to extinction.

I haven't yet tried digging my own fishing ponds underground (I've got a few large water storage tanks I could tap, and there are a few places I could excavate within the other biomes), though I can't say I'm particularly optimistic.

[LegacyCWAL]

Yeah, unlike what Albedo says, there's really three types of fish: creatures, vermin, and fishing stocks.  It is fully possible to deplete an area's fishing while there's still vermin/creature fish swimming around, and vice versa.

In my experience, once you've fished out an area, it's fished out forever.  It may still have vermin-fish, but your fisherdwarves won't get anything.  I'm pretty sure it's a bug because it seems to think the fishing stocks are replenished when the seasons change, but the first time a fisherdwarf tries, I get the "there is nothing to catch" message.  So basically, you're going to have to find a different biome to fish in and watch your fisherdwarves very, very carefully, turning off the fishing labor after they've caught a batch or two.

[Hyndis]

Fish stocks do not recover. Ever.

My fortress is going on 35 years. My legendary fisherdwarf destroyed the local fish stocks about 5 years in, and has since been trapping the fire snakes for sushi.

For the past 30 years, 0 fish caught. And he tries every season.

[awdball]

That is odd, there must be some other factors at work here. I have a small isolationist fort that I've been running for 20 or 30 dwarf years now, working on second generation dwarves, and I get vermin fish and turtle stocks replenishing every season. For the first dozen years I was fishing out the swamps each season but now my fishers are so good I had to turn off fishing or suffer the consequences of having a hundred turtle rotting because they overflowed my meager barrel supply. I about 90% sure that that game is in 40d12, but there's a slim chance it's still in 40c. My map is a wet forested map with an aquifer and many ponds but no brook or river.

[Hyndis]

My game is 40d. I just have a single fisherdwarf, and I'll periodically check the stocks listing for raw fish, but there is never anything there.

Luckily the human caravan brings a mountain of seafood every year. I trade them quay bush roasts for their seafood, and then make seafood roasts.