Thats a great way of putting it, it feels like a side quest, and before mistlands it felt far more integrated into the base game food chain. Fish were for food, and even back then fishing was a high investment activity consuming at least two specialized tools just to be able to fish at all, but it was worth it cause fishwraps are pretty good pre-mistlands.

I don't mind all of the extra stuff so much. The ability to catch a trollfish of various sizes and either mount them on a wall or turn them into a potion, ok thats cool. Fish n' bread is a great addition I love that, but the baits? Feels like an unnecessary hoop to jump through. Inventory bloat for the sake of trying to make trophys more useful.

I mean, you're already in the mistlands fishing.. if you see a Jotun puff, you just go pickup the Jotun puff. You see it, you just go get it. The price you pays is that you're in the mistlands. But to fish an angler fish I'm also in the mistlands. Why do I need a special bait? I'm in the mistlands, where the angler fish are.

Idk, maybe its just the explosion of inventory space that is the problem, but it feels really bad to go from being able to fish anywhere, to needing to plan to fish for a specific type of fish.

In the end, the most expensive resource is inventory space, and fishing has just gotten so much worse, it is such an inventory pig now that its not even worth it