Just adding my frustration to this thread. I was wondering why Ambling Caltrop seems more difficult to catch than some of the most notoriously difficult fish in the game, and why it wasn't identified as such before, but now I understand why.

I appreciate the advice but Surface Slap isn't a great solution as it only really lasts for one cast since you have a 1/3 chance of getting the right ! spawn. And then on the rare occasion you do catch a Gecko, around 80% of my mooch attempts result in the !! fish, a problem that wouldn't exist if the !! fish wasn't at the hole. So on average I get around 4-5 good attempts per window on a >3% fish with currently 16 hrs until the next window. It's so bad that I may just ignore this fish until they fix it, and this is coming from someone who's caught some of the most elusive fish in the game.