I recently had a discussion with a good friend about fishing minigames, and just wanted to share it online for no particular reason. ;)
In most other games where fishing is an optional side task, it either boils down to ....
RNG / sheer luck with very little opportunities to improve anything. Most Pokémon games are an example here: you cast your line then push a button and you get what you get. There is no way you could learn to push the button in a more skillful way, so the player can not improve. This is especially bad if you can get a certain Pokémon or evolution item only by fishing, because it means you'll either get lucky and immediatly get what you want, or you spend three weeks straight sitting in the same spot without making any progress. And you can not change anything about that.
Upgrades alone. To catch better fish, you need better rods and/or bobbers. That's it. There's no minigame to learn, just the "push button to reel in" mechanic again. An example for this would be Terraria, which offers a huge amount of possible upgrades for your equipment but ultimately no actual "minigame" because you just need to push one button to get your fish out of the water.
Skill alone with no way of improving things in a meaningful manner. An example for this would be the Fishing Hole in Twilight Princess. Beautiful environment, nice animations, gorgeous music - but if you suck at the minigame, then you suck forever. There's no way to make the process easier without "in-game" cheating (Sinking Lure, but the owner will not accept anything caught with it so it is pretty pointless to get it in the first place).
Obnoxious button mashing. Personally I just hate this so, so much ... it is uncreative and annoying. As much as I like Dragon Quest Builders otherwise, but their fishing minigame is a prime example of this. Try catching an XXL Whale Shark without getting a cramp and/or ruining your controller....
Minigame doesn't feel like fishing. An example would be FF12 where the "fishing" is done by repeating the button combinations on the screen as fast as possible. They could have used the same mechanic for drastically different minigames (like a crane game or a mini version of Street Fighter) and it wouldn't have made any difference. It only counts as a "fishing" minigame because the game says so. Oh and you don't even GET fish this way, because all rewards for this minigame are potions and rocks and money.
Now Stardew Valley on the other hand has, in my opinion, the best mix of all of these factors. There is RNG involved to a certain degree to keep things interesting, but you also get numerous ways to improve your odds.
It takes a certain amount of skill to keep the bobber inside the green line, so the player actually has a chance to "git gud" even without having to rely on in-game upgrades.
...but if you really can't get the hang of the minigame itself or have slow reflexes (for medical reasons etc.), you can still yield better results by using better rods, different bobbers, better bait, food bonuses and the like, or levelling up your character's fishing skill.
It is a super simple game (in a good way!) and has easy-to-understand mechanics without monotonous button mashing.
It also feels a lot more "lively" because the sole dev made sure that different fish behave differently, like that the bar barely moves when you reel in a slow fish like carp but will jump around like Sonic on crack when you hook a Lava Eel. The green bar "darting" also has a kinda similar feel to IRL fishing (better than repeating button combinations at least) since you have to respond to the fish's movements and give the line some slack in the right moment (not just bluntly reeling in until the line snaps).
Plus, there's actually lots of other stuff you can DO with the fishing minigame that overlaps with other tasks and features the game has to offer, like crafting worm bins to get your personal source of bait or tossing your catch into your own pond on the farm where they multiply over time and can net you other produce like for example caviar from sturgeons. You also sometimes need specific fish to cook a certain dish, there are villager requests centered around catching certain amounts of lake / river / ocean fish to "reduce their numbers" and many more.
There's even a villager request to fish garbage out of the lake to clean it up, and some fishing garbage can be recycled into valuable crafting components. This is a massive improvement over some other games where the respective minigame feels disconnected from the rest of the gameplay, and you simply fish to sell the catch and nothing else.
Also a nice touch that the only non-legendary fish that doesn't reproduce in a pond is the tiger trout. This hybrid species is infertile IRL and I was pleasantly surprised that Concerned Ape would include such a small but crucial detail in a game that isn't even primarily about fishing. ♥
There are a ton of other things I love about Stardew Valley, but this particular minigame is simply peak top tier fishing minigame design.
OC text by @justlookingfordragon@lemmy.world
If you're still willing to try Stardew Valley (I understand there's a 1.7 update coming out sometime):
Honestly, the thing that helps me absolutely the most when fishing is changing your zoom level. this works on the PC, I'm not sure how well it works on other platforms: Whenever you get to your fishing spot, zoom your screen in like ... I dunno, maybe 5-6 times? When you cast your rod, the fishing bar will be a lot larger. I find it almost impossible to catch fish with a zoomed-out bar, because the movements you need to make on the mouse become so fine relative to the image presented. By zooming in, the fishing bar is larger and your movements don't need to be nearly so fine. I honestly can NOT catch fish if it's zoomed out too far. [If you're too far zoomed, the ends of the fishing bar will disappear off-screen; just quit fishing and re-zoom to someplace you're comfortable with.]
Other stuff:
Go to Willy's and buy some fish stew; that'll get you a +1 on your fishing skill.
If you have the Sewers or Secret Woods open, go there; otherwise the Mountain Lake. You're fishing for Carp; they're pretty much the easiest and most common thing to catch, as they don't move around much and move comparatively slowly.
In the Sewers, the only fishable items are: Mutant Carp and Radioactive Carp, both of which you can stop chasing immediately; Green Algae, White Algae, and Trash, all of which pull up immediately (and catching trash still counts toward your fishing skill); and Carp. In the Secret Woods, the only fishable items are: Catfish, which only occur during and will bounce around quickly and you can ignore; Woodskip, which will bounce around a bit; and Carp. [Can't remember if the Secret Woods has trash or not.] The Mountain Lake is your last resort, as there are a number of different other fish that can be caught there, though you can maximize your chances of getting Carp by casting as close as possible to the shore.
Eat your fish stew. Cast your fishing line as close to the shore as possible; this will minimize the number of other fish you'll catch, increasing your likelihood of getting Carp [and trash, but even catching trash counts toward Fishing skill level]. When the line twitches, don't pull on your rod - like I said, Carp don't move very fast. When you do need to move it, don't down the mouse button to move the fishing area, that'll likely move it too far/fast for Carp (though it's a good idea for other fish). Instead, gently and repeatedly tap your mouse button to keep the fishing area behind the Carp. Ideally, later on, you'll want to try to keep the Carp in the upper portion of the fishing area, as the fishing area moves down slower than it moves up so you need more "down" response time, but in the beginning just having the area anywhere behind the Carp will do.
Aside from actively fishing, don't overlook foraging for crab pots. Almost all of the items you need for the Crab Pot bundle in the Community Center can be foraged from the Beach; the one exception is Crab itself, which you can get from the Mines and the Travelling Cart. The reward for the Crab Pot bundle is three Crab Pots. Which, I know, you can't use because you don't get access to bait at Willy's until you reach level 3 fishing. However, you can befriend Linus and get his 4-heart event, which gets you access to Wild Bait, and you can use Wild Bait to bait the Crab Pots. Everything you harvest from a Crab Pot goes toward your Fishing skiill, including trash. Once you get level 2 fishing, you can purchase regular bait from Willy.
As your skills advance, you can buy a higher level rod that allows bait to increase how fast fish bite; and later you can buy another higher level rod that allows you to attach different types of tackle, with different effects. The Cork bobber expands the size of your fishing area, and it's one of my favorites.
Don't forget to check with Gus on what the special of the day is; sometimes he sells a special that has higher fishing buffs, which can be useful. You can check what the special is simply by calling him on the phone when you wake up; his answering machine will pick up and tell you what the special of the day is.
If you use MouseyPounds' Stardew Predictor, it'll tell you what the Travelling Cart has for sale each day (so you can tell whether you need to save up money ahead of time, or run over there to buy something particular); and it'll also try to predict (these predictions are less accurate) what items might be found in various garbage cans, in case any of those are helpful as well - trash cans occasionally have fish in them. Trashed fish don't count toward your Fishing skill level, but you can use them in Community Center bundles or cook with them.
And these are all really cool tips and hints, but honestly, again, the one thing that helped me the most with fishing was to change the zoom level on my screen.
Sincerely, someone else who hates fishing in the Valley
Something you left out is that you can get to level three fishing to buy bait just by having Robin build a fish pond on your farm (forage the seaweed and kill green slimes for the green algae - both can be pulled from trash cans too) and dropping a cart-bought or trash can fish, or certain beach forage, in there, completing fish pond quests and collecting stuff produced by the pond gets you fishing experience. (Although some fish are probably better than others for that, some fish pond quests are a pain.)
Edit: also don't sleep on the training rod early game, it's super cheap and basically sets your fishing skill to level five to make fishing easier, and you'll only hook easy fish. Also Spoilers: if you haven't reached fishing level 1 by spring 28 year 1 you can trigger a cutscene where Willy shows up and gives you fishing level 1 and the training rod.
This is very in depth and helpful, thanks a lot. I did/do generally play at near 4K res (3840x1600), so the zooming in idea may be just what I need. I still don't expect to enjoy the fishing game, but it would be nice to finish the Community Center (which you sadly cannot actually do purely with trash can fish or semi-random traveling shop fish... I tried).
Trying googling reddit, there was a guy there who managed to get up to level 10 fishing without touching a rod, I think it was all crab pots, but there is a way. But yeah, for me, the winning detail was zooming in.