I love the mood of this, and the pixel art is very very nice :DD (Sidenote: t's so good to see actual pixel art in a game, I've seen so many lately with ai generated 'pixel' assets, so good god is it refreshing <3) Great audio too, love the little squeaks <3 Also like the audio cue of the ~danger music~ when things start to get real bad, it was fun to realise and learn, I love it when progression in a game is a mixture of in-game upgrades and the player actually learning and getting better, it's so much fun!! :D
Did get frustrated a couple times when losing all my fish cuz I died, but in all honestly that's probably on me for being too risky >:]
It also took me a hot minute to realise I could let go to give the fishing line some slack- in hindsight it makes sense with the colour of the bar turning to red, but it hadn't clicked! I thought I had to keep holding it cuz the instructions just said 'hold' with no mention of letting go (despite me having played other fishing games/minigames where you let go...once again that may just be on me ._.)
But yeah! I enjoyed the variety of mechanics for the fish, really made you think about the best time to call it, e.g. with the dark trickster making it beneficial to stop sooner rather than later! It was also fun that some adjacent fish bonuses were per-tile-in-contact, and others (like same-species bonus) just needed a single point of contact, it helped limit any repetitiveness in the bonuses, having those different rulesets which of course also affects layout! I also loved the variety of shapes the fish had, and how especially the eely ones had such strange shapes, it makes fitting them together pretty fun :D Also neat how the ourobourus is a perfect circle with a little gap for fitting a little fish in! (I was delighted when I got the ourobourus + goldfish in the middle, just like the background art :D). I just love all the shapes and the ways they fit together!! Not just up against each other but also working around the edges of empty spaces for the empty cell bonus! I also of course like the way the fish increased in strangeness as the game went on, it may be a common fishing game trope but by god it's a good one!
I also really appreciated the fact that you can left-click and let go to pick up a fish rather than having to hold it down- it meant it was actually possible to right-click rotate using a trackpad, it makes all the difference and I always notice when games have that so thank you! :D Also means less finger strain :3
Overall very fun, visually wonderful, sweet and succinct story/premise, and the end animation was really cute :D (Also appreciated that it repeats in case you miss some of it, which I did the first time!) It could honestly be extended if you ever so felt like it, with higher prices for the locks and maybe an extra page of inventory, hooks on the side of the boat for holding spare fish while sorting, maybe a weather machine to check the likelihood % of each weather event next session, etc! But of course only if you want, it definitely feels complete like this, no sense of anything missing!
Edit:!! Oh and also before I forget, I encountered a bug where I frantically was sorting just before the fish sold, and I tossed a snail shell for an empty slot bonus, and the money calculation stopped and the fish weren't removed from my inventory. I went out, came back, and it counted everything and yoinked the fish as normal (probably giving me a duplicate score on a fish or two that were counted before I chucked the snail overboard). Far from gamebreaking, just thought I should mention it!
((Also-
It'd be neat if there was a 'sell' button so you could sort fish before they're totalled up and removed, since it's often a scramble to finish sorting as you're being extracted! Unless, of course, that's entirely intentional, in which case I respect that you conniving little bastard >:P /silly))