Surface Slap question

Picked up on big fishing earlier this year, been enjoying the process, filling out the logs, learning all the tricks, etc. But there's one thing I've never been quite sure of with using Surface Slap when you're aiming for something rare or hard to catch:

Is it better to Slap the (seemingly) most "common" fish, in the hopes that it means an even higher chance of catching what you're after? (does the "percent chance to catch 'common fish'" get equally-ish distributed to everything else available?)

OR

Is it better to Slap whatever has the longest bite time, to reduce the long waits between hooking something you don't even want? (more casts, even if most are trash bites, means more chances that you'll get what you want?)

Up until now, I've been going with the latter. Don't wanna wait 20-30 seconds just to find out I didn't get what I'm after. In doing so, I just sorta assume, as long as something is slapped away, the chances for everything else go up all the same
But. If it's possible that slapping away the (hypothetical) 50% chance fish means a higher increase on the rare fish, compared to slapping away the (hypothetical) 20% fish, maybe I need to reconsider my approach.

For the % increase of slapping the "most common", (to my knowledge) you just remove that % from the pool and recalculate the stats, so it's kinda redistributed.
ex : 50%-30%-18%-2% -> if you slap the 50% it'd become 60%-36%-4%

For slapping the "longest catch", that can complement the % if a long and a short are close, but keep in mind the % you may find probably don't take slapped fishes into acount.
You might also want to slap a short one sometime depending on the big fish window

It's situational based on what you're trying to catch. How many fish are in the pool, how long is the window, and so on.

If there are only four fish in the pool it's often most efficient to slap the most common one. If you only have a 6 minute window you're probably better off slapping the longest bite time, etc. There's no one size fits all answer.

Hmmm... all fair...

I suppose the core of the question comes down to: Is it known that Surface Slap "redistributes" catch percentages? If so, does it do so equally? OR. Could it be designed such that the system is still making the exact same calculations/rolls, and simply discarding any Slapped results, until it comes up with a value that is valid? (or is there even any difference? Idk, I sucked at statistics)

Using an arbitrary analogous "bag of marbles" example, with previous numbers just because. Fishing = reaching into bag of 100 marbles, result is whatever you picked, you put marble back, still 100 marbles. Does Surface Slap (of the common fish) = removing all 50 marbles from the bag, effectively doubling all other probabilities (though doubling may or may not be technically accurate for actual fishing)? Or does Surface Slap = repeating the same attempt with all 100 marbles until you pick one that isn't the one you slapped? (and, again, not sure what, if any, difference that may make in the maths...)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

It's situational based on what you're trying to catch. How many fish are in the pool, how long is the window, and so on.

If there are only four fish in the pool it's often most efficient to slap the most common one. If you only have a 6 minute window you're probably better off slapping the longest bite time, etc. There's no one size fits all answer.

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This does sound most sensible, tho... but I still can't help but wonder, even with short windows, if it's better to increase your odds (by slapping common fish), or increase attempts (long bite). 'Course... maybe it's still completely variable and largely dependent on how much you (might) increase your odds, vs how many extra attempts you should be able to fit in.