Striped Snapper goes down in one slash and I got one as my first fish in the session so it might be better categorized as small! The other tips here have been incredibly helpful tho ^_^

@SidneyPrescott96 cept the problem that makes fishing in this game so awful as an experience is the lack of stamina for fish. even though it's a newer game than okami, Final fantasy 15 has a more enjoyable fishing system because fish actually have stamina and even if it's a hard to catch fish, you WILL catch it cause it'll eventually get tired, yea it's new than okami was but it doesn't take much for them at the time of making this game to just give fish a stamina bar so that they get tired and makes them easier to reel in like normal fishing. if we have a bar why don't the fish.

70+ hours and still no trace of that damn only missing loach.
Today's do or die!!

hiding giant salmon is a little pointless as its a required fish to catch before one can even fish freely, i think the whopper is also required, aka they aren't really a secret and no one should be looking up a guide prior to that.

Addendum to below: It also seems like you can tell which fish you're about to catch by watching for patterns in easily they're reeled in and in how much they fight you. For example, river crabs and prawns don't fight much at all, while the huchen will fight you excessively. Giant Catfish fight you more than regular Catfish do. Each fish seems to "feel" different - I wasn't expecting that level of complexity from a 15 year old game!

They put fish evasion mechanics in Okami. They put fish evasion mechanics in Okami.

After many attempts, I've discovered something about playing this minigame on controllers - The portion where you need to reel the fish in has to do with rhythm. You do not need to button-mash in order to reel the fish in; you have to follow the left and right movements in time in order to keep it in the green zone. The fish will be reeled in eventually as long as it's in the green zone. There is some timing involved, and it's obviously easier with the smaller fish. It's easier if you know the patterns the fish tend to take.

@ThePhantomSafetyPin It has been a while since I've played but if I recall correctly there's only two rods you can buy. One is needed to progress through the game's story and the other one is needed to complete a side quest. By design larger fish are indeed harder to catch than smaller ones, probably 'cuz they are worth quite more in terms of money.

@Kyukyu, question - do I need to have a specific kind of pole to catch some fish, or do I need to pull harder for others than for some? I'm having trouble reeling in some of the larger ones, it takes forever and it never seems to bring the fish closer. Is that by design?

@Kyukyu Ah, thank you! I'll make sure to show that fish bastard what for!

@FISH Not all fish spawn when you throw out your fishing line. The game actually predetermines a specific pool of fish for each size everytime you start fishing. If you are having issues finding a specific fish somewhere, stop fishing and then start it again to have it spawn a new pool. Almost everyone that tried to complete this game's achievements has had issues finding one or maybe two specific fish which aren't always the same ones for everyone due to that reason. I remember it took me quite some time to finally fish a Loach back then for example, which was the last fish I required to complete my fishing tome.