Fishing Made Better Mod (1.12.2) adds realistic fishing methods and a complete fishing minigame.
To complete the fishing minigame, you need to balance your line’s tension and reel in the fish. If the fish gets too far away or takes too long to catch you could lose it. You can also alter the appearance of the minigame depending on where you fish, like your biome, dimension and Y-level as well as the liquid you’re fishing in.
Fish behavior and habitat are two other mechanics. Fish behavior is complex, and each fish has its own unique stats. Fish require certain habitats in order to survive and be caught. This includes living only in water, lava, Void, biomes, and being active only under certain conditions like light, weather, or depth.
Populations are now based on more realistic methods. Each chunk has a finite number of fish. If you overfish one area, it can lead to their extermination. If they are given enough food (from the bait box), fish can reproduce in a single chunk.
You can place a live fish in a water bucket to transfer it to other locations or set up fish hatcheries to breed specific fish species (Ex. for good food, a specific type of fish, etc.).
Each fish has its own unique characteristics. These include how long they stay on the hook, what they can scale and what they will produce, what they can be cut up and what they can be sliced to, and so forth.
All the stats and types of fish are configurable. Any modded fish can be defined in the config files. They will then be found in-game according to the settings that you have given them. If you have the associated mod installed, the default configurations for all vanilla fish and all Aquaculture fish configs are set up. They will automatically generate upon your first load of FMB.
This mod aims to improve vanilla fishing by making it more complex and rewarding, as well as requiring more research into the fishing ecosystem. It can be used with other fish mods, allowing you to load custom configurations for different mods.