The whole the fish gets away thing...

[Nenluen]

I would prefer it if there weren't just a RNG catch cap on Fish, if you manage to haver the right gear, be at the right spot, at the right time, with the right weather, jump through all the right hoops (intuition, mooch chain) and then manage to beat the final RNG of 'will this fish bite on what few attempts I have this window', there shouldn't also be another arbitrary roll of the dice that the player can do absolutely nothing about. Because some of these windows are quite small, quite far apart, or sometimes, both. (at the time of this writing the next window for the Duskfish in Stormblood is 28 Earth days away)

In my magical Christmas Land, for all fish that aren't part of the latest expansion:
All fish could get to 100% catch with enough gathering, and I mean ALL fish, not just Big Fish, because getting 'Fish Gets Away' on a Sky Faerie or Scorpionfly while trying to trigger intuition for the Sea Butterfly is like 'c'mon, really?'
Surface Slap would last on a single fish (like release) until you move from the spot, but this is because I have an unwanted affinity for Scholar Sculpins (Upper Thaliak River, for Armor Fish) and they will not stop taking my bait and there's only so much GP one can spend slapping them away (seriously, I have some sort of inverse luck with these things, my ratio of sculpin to crickets on my latest, and finally last attempt at the Armor Fish, was 11 to 5, and I slapped one sculpin away). This could be worded like "this lasts until you catch a fish near to your own level" like.. 81-90 for a level 90 character.
Fish Eyes would last longer, like 2-3 minutes, to allow for more than one mooch attempt (I did pull the Wootz Knifefish Zenith on a fish eyes pull, so, while sometimes one is all you need, it helps to have more chances to use it).

But I also recognize I am possessed of some truly bizarre luck, like having landed the Slime King (Lower Soot Creek, Central Thanalan) on my first ever cast at that fishing hole and then going and getting 'The Fish Get Away' 19 times in a row on some fish that I have blocked from my memory in La Noscea.

[Fruity_Snacks]

<snip>

Fishing in FFXIV tries to mimic real-life fishing. If I recall correctly from some interview - the guy in charge of the fishing 'team' (that does all the other gathering stuff) does actual fishing rather often in the Pacific. In real life, you can go out, find place with Coal, see the coal and... get Coal with relative ease. With fishing (in real life), you can see the fish in the water, have the right bait, be right there when it's hungry - and still not get the fish because it decides to run away when it nibbles the bait, or you scare it off, or you fail your hookset. That's what FFXIV fishing is replicating (to a degree). You shouldn't compare FSH to BTN/MIN because it's so far away from them. FSH is basically the BLU of the DoLs. It was the first limited job. On top of that all, each fish has a certain personality and behavior - part of which is determined by their get-away rate. You take that away, you really take away the personality of fishing.

Surface slap already does act like release, in a way. Surface Slap will ONLY be removed if you catch a fish. If you're going for Armor Fish - Hedgemole Cricket is only a ! bite, so if you get a !! bite -- just... don't reel it in (ie; don't press hook or powerful hookset). Not only does it save time, it preserves the Surface Slap and Prize Catch buff. So you don't have to re-slap a fish every time. This isn't super well conveyed in the game, but is extremely helpful!

(Also that La Noscea fish that got away 19 times was probably Faerie Queen, and it is known to be a "Common, but slippery" bite - meaning it bites often, but gets away with a higher rate. Some fish are the inverse. If you go through the Clown Tetra > Eryops > Priest of Yx'lokwa chain to mooch into Greater Serpent of Ronka, you have a really good chance that it won't get away.... but it's also a Legendary Fish, so it's still not 100%... and that's just the nature of Legendary fish).