I'm about 40 hrs into the game and I thought I'd give a fishing pole a try. But the experience is turning out to be confusing and frustrating, and I don't know if there's something I'm doing wrong or not. A lot of the time in this game it's a matter of trying over and over, but there's no point in that if what I'm doing is never going to work.

Here's what the wiki says:

Rod fishing

Right-click on a tile or boat > Start fishing
A timer begins for casting. Cast by moving the mouse. When the circle is not red, left-click to cast at that spot.
A 2nd timer starts (3 minutes). During this time, the following can happen:

After a delay, a fish will appear and swim to the hook where it will take a bite (the float bobs up and down as well as the line moves). A splashing sound can be heard if your sound is turned on.
You have a limited time to try to hook the fish (by left-clicking anywhere on the screen).
If you manage to hook a fish it will try to get away, during this time you may see the fish moving away from or closer to you. It is helpful to swivel right or left to create tension on your line, essentially try to keep it taut pulling opposite direction of the fish.
If the fish gets too far away, it will escape.
If the fish gets close to you, it will be caught.
There is a possibility for the rod to break (actually the rod stays with you but you lose the reel and anything in it).
There is a possibility for the line to snap (you will lose anything that was on the line as well).

The in-game tutorial has even less detail.

So I'm fine up to the point where it says "You have a limited time to hook the fish." What do they mean by a "limited time", seconds, minutes, hours? I figure my reaction time is about a quarter second, so hopefully that's fast enough. But I'm not even sure what I should be reacting to, the floater dipping, the pole moving, or the "fish nibbling at your bait" message. Is there a way to tell if the fish was hooked? So far I haven't seen any change, but I don't know if that's because there isn't a way to tell or because I've never managed to hook one. What, if anything, I should be doing once the fish is hooked. Should I be clicking something or just wait? The wiki seems to say you should just watch or swivel a bit. I'm not convinced that swiveling does anything, but I haven't caught a fish yet so what do I know?

I looked on YouTube to try to find a video of someone catching a fish this way, but I was only able to find one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNB28D4IB0M
She does catch a fish after a lot of trial and error, but it's hard to tell what she actually did. If nothing else at least it's video evidence that it is possible. What's needed is an actual video tutorial by someone who knows what they're doing. Is anyone even fishing this way anymore? I gather that before the update the fishing mechanic was too easy, just queue up a bunch a casts and go have a cup of coffee while the game does all the work. I'm just hoping they didn't go too far the other way, making it so difficult that it's not worth the trouble.