Fishing needs a total overhaul

[Brightamethyst]

With normal fishing, we can also confidently predict what will bite when we cast out. With Spearfishing, it's a toss up. You poke the bubbles and get some random fish.

You can predict what CAN bite, not what will. Most of the time you're still at the mercy of RNG to actually get the bite you want. Getting a random fish from a node is exactly the same as getting a random bite from a cast. The only difference is that you can choose not to reel in a cast if you want.

[Fruity_Snacks]

Depending on the location, anyway... <snip for char length>

With the right bait you can take a fish from 25% to up to 100%. Surface Slap can take a fish from, 90% to 100% (look at Moggle Mogpom for example, with Surface slap you can take it from a 21% chance to a 100% chance). These are not things you can do with Spearfishing.
The reason we can do them is because of the four main conditions of rod fishing -- Bait, Time, Weather, Location. Your suggestion to remove that so it just 3 baits and whatever removes any chance of being able to take that 21% to 100%.

It's also worth noting that unless you're going for Big/Legendary Fish (the rare ones added each patch) you do not need to deal with conditions most of the time. Useful fish, like Blue Crab, Sweetmeat Mussels, etc are always up. You just need the right bait (and most of the time you just need Versatile lure). You don't really care about anything besides Bait and Location.

All that said -- you're right. In-game knowledge of the conditions for fishing is not very good. Part of this is by design, they want fish to be discovered, to be accidentally caught while you're just going for a random cast one day. It has been suggested and talked about for a long while that fish should, at a certain point, have better in-game references. No one wants fishing to immediately tell you, on patch day, where and what a fishes conditions are. Part of the of the fun and (imo) greatness of fishing is the fact that there isn't this information immediately, and that the community comes together to find all the fish. But, the suggestion of the log being more filled in as expansions come out, or even NPC's providing little hints and clues to what fish might be where and when, has been discussed. There's just a fine line between providing info to make it more accessible for folks, and just giving the answer out. Doing the latter would ruin one of the fun things about fishing for a LOT of people.

(And, as for quests, they pretty much tell you exactly what and where you need to be for fishing, so for those you just need to read the dialogue/quest description)

You can predict what CAN bite, not what will.. <snip for char length>

You're still at the mercy of RNG, but if you give me the specifics of what's happening with a bite (bite type, weather, time, bait, etc), I can tell you with confidence what fish was about to bite with far, far more confidence than spearfishing. I won't agree that Spearfishing and Casting are exactly the same in terms of the RNG mechanics, since we can be more selective with rod fishing, but will concede that I may have been a little too over-zealous with my confidence.

It is though, much easier to know what will be on the other end of a stick with Rod fishing, than it is spearfishing. (Also see above as to why Spearfishing and removing fishing conditions is bad for gameplay).

[Calysto]

While I don't think Fishing need a total overaul ; it could use some quality of life
-The UI is outdated

-item links
-gathering search
-infos about baits/time/weather
-possibility to set an in-game alarm
-for uncaught fishes, maybe some cryptic riddle like ARR exploration nodes ?

-More fishes need to be usefull and not just sand pockets.

-Maybe a weekly turn-in of some kind ? could be nice to FSH and/or the marketboard. (ex: turn up to 100 fishes a week for a chance at some mascots/glams) kinda like fashion repport

The kit itself could use a bit of balancing regardng cost/recast/durations of some actions ; but EW removal of HQ gathering will probably affect FSH a lot ; next week LL should give us some infos about that.

[Fruity_Snacks]

Thanks for the video's, your videos cleared up some confusion I had about some fish.

You're welcome

... but EW removal of HQ gathering will probably affect FSH a lot...

It actually probably won't change things at all. Size already determines if a fish is HQ or not (and its collectability rate is just size x10), so they'll probably just swap "HQ" for <whatever the new name of the metric is> and literally leave the mechanic as is. Obviously won't know for sure until the 5th, but that's what I'm putting my money down on.