Studium fish causing unfair advantage in EW big fishing (Especially Furcacauda)

[Mayoyama]

Greetings community managers and fellow Big Fishers!

I want to request the Dev team to make big fishing fair and equal for ALL fishers trying for big fish like Furcacauda and Snowy Parexus. Currently, those players who have yet to complete the studium quests have quite an unfair advantage over those who did the quests early in the expansion for experience points and the side story content.

Example:
Furcacauda in Lethe has only a very short window (about 30 seconds).
If you surface slap the Iribanion (!! hook), you will get mostly Isle Skippers, a ! hook fish with VERY quick bite time of 4-6 seconds. (The last fish, Antheia, is much less common)
HOWEVER, if you have completed the Studium quests, suddenly you have another !! hook fish, Smaragdos, to contend with, that bites fairly frequently, AND it takes a lot longer to bite (12-17 seconds without chum). It means that for every Smaragdos a player hooks, even with chum, the player who doesn't have studium done could potentially have an extra 1-2 cast chances at hooking Furcacauda, which in turn means they have a clear and unfair advantage, especially considering how short the window for Furcacauda is.

I would like to suggest 3 possible solutions to this:
1) Remove studium (and Crystaline mean) fish from the fishing holes altogether
2) Change the bait the Studium/Mean fish can be caught with, so that it does not match the bait required for the Big Fish (for example, remove Smaragdos from Sky Spoon Lure and Garlean Clam from Mayfly)
3) Simply make it so those fish cannot be caught without the relevant quest active, and/or the specific stage's quest fishing rod equipped (after quest is done, fishing rod upgrades and the fish cannot be caught with the upgraded rod). (Options 2&3 seems better to me, because if for whatever reason the person wants to catch that fish again, they can repeat the fishing rod relic quest line)

This topic has been discussed and tested quite a lot on external fishing discord channels and websites. I hope this will reach the dev team and a solution can be found, or at least, not have the same problem repeat yet again with Dawntrail Big Fishing. I, for one, really enjoy the side story content and am annoyed that I will have to skip it for fishing in Dawntrail to avoid another situation like Furcacauda.

Thank you for reading.

[Brightamethyst]

Agreed. There's no reason for quest specific fish to stick around once you've completed the quest.