Fishing woes: quest for anchovies

I had set my mind on trying to make a few Marinara Pizzas to see how much money can be made off it. Unfortunately I started making Pizza Dough before I realized I couldn't buy any Icefish or Sandfish on auction. So I decide to mule my fishing pole to try my hand at catching them myself. It's been a long time since I've fished.

I don't bot fishing but, for god's sake, I wish I did. I had mistaken my carbon rod for my composite rod and it broke on a Giant Donko in Rabao. I lose the rod and the Sabiki Rig for an immediate 5k loss. I get the composite off my mule and proceed. I find out that the HP depletion rate of the composite is absolute crap and my 10 skill difference from the fish's cap is apparently too much to manage. The rod wiggles way too much and won't stay in any position long enough. It's the fish though, not just the skill. I've caught Bhefel Marlin which cap at 61 before with much less problems than this. To add to the insult the bite rate on Sabiki Rig is utter crap. In about an hour I got 5 bites, 2 of which I caught before the carbon rod broke and the other 3 I lost because I couldn't get them down with the composite rod. I owned a Lu Shang's at some pont, but I sold it because the me of two years ago figured it was not worth his time. Oh, how smart I was two years ago.

How can such a tedious system that doesn't deliver exceptional profits still survive? Botting, obviously. I'm positive most fish on AH are there thanks to botters. Do I condone it? No. I just think of the alternative as being much worse. If SE was able to detect fishbots, then they wouldn't exist, but then neither would the fish supply we depend on now. Prices would skyrocket or some fish would just disappear for a long time as a great deal of the people that fish for profit just NPC all their fish to avoid the hassle of the AH and undercutters. I've capped Chocobo Digging and even though I couldn't find the deserts or jungles empty if my life depended on it, it's still more gil/hour than I could get fishing with less mental strain. Unless I AFK fish (i.e. bot), there is no way I could bare the time invested. Fishing actually requires SOME concentration which means even if I try to watch TV or whatever while I'm doing it, I have to focus on the fishing mini-game whenever something bites.

SE would have to change the fishing process to counter botters, but honestly I don't care enough to worry about it. I just know I'm not going to be fishing again for a long time. I have an alternative way to make gil, but I can't help but utter my frustration over the fishing system. It's MADE for botters and, at the same time, plays a big part in the consumables economy. I wonder how people that don't bot manage to do this. Admittedly, the way I went about it wasn't the best. I didn't use live bait, which would have increased the bite-rate and I also tried to target a single fish, which reduces the bite rates again. If you use a more blanket live bait you'll catch all sorts of things that you can sell or NPC which increases the profitability of fishing.

I just checked FFXIAH and there are sandfish on AH right now. So maybe there's hope for making pizzas. While I'm at it, I ran the numbers for Marinara Pizza and costs can depend greatly on the price of Holy Basil and Chalaimbille and to a much lesser extent Sandfish, Black Pepper and Semolina. If you can minimize those you could make more than 1k profit on NQ's, but still nothing spectacular. I should have done this before setting my mind on trying to craft them regardless of costs. BTW, I realize that in this post I might be short changing some of the very dedicated players that don't mind the time it takes to gather raw materials or fish for hours on end without assistance. I respect that you can play that game within the game and still have time and interest in doing the more mainstream activities. Props!