Fishing questions

Doing old fishing content, starting with ARR city-states and working down the list within the log.
When it comes to the green-tier fish (the spot's Big Fish), I feel like there's GOT TO BE a pattern for determining how to properly catch those fish. In current content, it's as easy as looking at the log on the missing fish entry and being told there's a time and/or weather condition, and the actual fishing itself comes down to grabbing that patch's highest level bait for the given spot type (freshwater, saltwater, space, etc.), and taking a day out irl to fish and fish until something happens.
In ARR it's much worse, since it was all still experimental. You didn't even have the tag that said there WAS a weather/time condition, lol, you just either got lucky or you did a tonne of experimentation and whatnot.
But I keep looking at things in the game texts and I feel like surely there's a pattern.
Here's an example:
In Old Gridania, there's a spot named Whispering Gorge. You can relatively deduce it's freshwater, since it's not connected to an ocean, and it's in the Black Shroud, which is mostly rivers, lakes, and ponds. So, freshwater bait.
Some of the bait descriptions specifically denote places where they work best, such as the fly tackle working best in shallow water, and some working best at depths. Then there's the difference between the lures and the organic bait, which we know some water critters will only bite something they can eat.
There's the fishing hole's level, which is 5, but that only pertains to the minimum level as FSH you can be to access it, whereas the list of normal fish in there range from ilvl 2 to ilvl 43 (you can see this in the fishing log for fish actually caught when you click on them). So, one would THINK that indicates the bait and lures actually needed, since those are also set by level, and obviously some of much too high a level or much too low a level will simply result in the game saying it's not the proper bait for that area.
Next, the fish themselves. Each area, at least in many of the ARR areas, has a green-tier fish that is a reskin or reuse of one of the normal fish there, which gives a hint as to which fish bait you'll use, since those fish use the same one. The only exception is when you have to mooch for a fish.
Lastly, the fish text themselves. Fish have text, and the normal fish text tend to give clues.
Now the problems I've run into are that, apart from the fact you rarely ever get any hint on weather or time, there's still a big margin for guesswork when determining which of the aforementioned factors are the correct ones. Which I found out after doing some research most players back then figured it all out through trial and error and many many fish logs and data sharing on websites and forums XD.
But sure, SURELY the game ITSELF offers clues?? >.>"
I mean, there are hunt experts litttered throughout the game that tell you the different mark hunts, and give clues to them, so why not this??

This post is bait.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Duraeus_Entenu

I mean, there are hunt experts litttered throughout the game that tell you the different mark hunts, and give clues to them, so why not this??

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Hunt hints are there because there's far too many triggers to just be randomly crowd sourced.

Big fish triggers are just limited to fishing. No "you can only catch this if you eat this food first." No "you have to use this one emote before fishing." No "this fish won't bite unless you use this minion."

You just fish. And it was always meant to be a crowd sourced information gathering community event. And the learning part just comes down to having hundreds of fishers fishing at all hours of the day, using all bait that doesn't return a "nothing bites." It's a level of brute force that you simply couldn't achieve for hunts.

^^^ Everything Hasrat said, basically.

You 100% can blindly bumble through most general cast and catch big fish if you are determined to, but given some fish can be down for days at a time if they're a weather proc it will be miserable unless you enjoy the experimentation. Fishing is, surprisingly, a very social job and it's how the information is out there for all big fish in the game.

There are a ton of resources online that are community driven for big-fish that help take the guesswork out if you're OK not doing things totally blind, even just the fish tracker that Carbuncle Plushy runs is an immensely useful resource as it tracks time/weather/bait for procs to try hook the fishes, or if certain mooches are needed to chain to that big fish.

Everything else from there is patience (and frustration when you get to Certain Big Fish in SB/ShB/EW, since it's all a game of RNG no matter how prepared you are) and perseverance.