Suggestion - FSH - Identical Gig/Cast

Identical Gig - Great addition to spearfishing - I feel like the GP is a heavy cost but worth it with unspoiled nodes. Same fish type for less chances of using Nature's Bounty for HQ items. A good balance overall.

Identical Cast - Only works for the next cast at a 350 GP cost.... seriously? Cast RNG already sucks. If this had a 4 stack(or something comparable to an unspoiled spearfishing node, ie 5/6) that get taken away per cast then it would have helped out. For such a huge GP cost for a SINGLE cast this ability is just a terrible addition to the kit. Also at the huge GP cost, why wouldn't you allow chaining for the ability? That could be another option, remove the disallow of chaining and lower the cost to 175-200 ish. Or lower the GP cost to 200 GP to start with and then limit the chain by adding in a buff that stacks and increase the GP cost of the ability which clears after a single cast without using it. Putting in a buff time limit for it would work just the same as the HQ buffs too... something.... anything more than the stupid way it's designed currently.

I totally agree with your post, the new skills for surface fishing are too expensive and completely pointless. They even limit the use of patience wasting GP without giving a valuable return.

If the single use was to limit the skill because underwater the attempts are maximum 4 or 5 while on the surface you can fish until you have lures the cost should have been a quarter of it.
To limit the power of the skill to a limited number of attempts could have been usable only under patience for example.

For a level 79 skill the expectation is that it is somehow useful. This one is expensive do not work with mooch and is only slightly useful if the fish can be a crafting ingredient, but most of the fishes are just fillers with no in game purpose or marked value.
Useful skill even if not for endgame are those added for the crafters to create items of lower levels more easily which also keeps the market for new players more alive. Why then not add a skill that makes the rare fishes of ARR slightly more reachable then a super low RNG probability few minutes every game day?

The fisher has always been of little use except for killing time while waiting for a dungeon. Way more worthy to play Miner and Botanist.
Not to mention the even more uselessness of the Retainer Fisher, which brings only fishes to level up, but only once you actually have already leveled up.

Gathering is not pleasant but can be rewarding, the fisher is not and with the new skills even less. In every MMO it is fundamental to have long term activities to keep the players running but they have to return some value.
Now if i go fishing for a day to get one single random super rare fish the comment form others is: "you really have time to waste!" or "You really have patience" while the other two gatherers are seen as source of income.

I really feel that Fisher should have gained a trait reducing the amount of GP needed for Patience or making precision/powerful free for a couple of hooks if the fishing chain keeps going.

It def seems like every expac fisher is just brought down more and more. There's so much effort put into fishing for the player that not really getting the payout a min/bot does is pretty sad.

Add in that King Salmon is a scrip exchange item and it seems like SE themselves are viewing fishing as not a real resource.