Fishing Skill Up Rate Nerfed?

I havent been fishing since about 2004 and the skillup rate back then was horrid but now it seems even worse. I'm lvl 17 and doing quss to get to 19 so I can head to SSG and start on neb's. I managed to get 0.4 in about 2 hrs. I then said screw it and grabbed some fishing +gear and went to SSG anyway. I'd catch neb's fine and dandy but only got a 0.2 in the whole 1.5 hrs I was there. (had on 3 pcs of +gear to make it 20 skill)
This is freakin insane....no wonder ppl have fish bots. Has anyone else noticed a drop in skill up rates? I was under the impression that they revamped the whole crafting skill up formula to increase the rates.

I have been fishing on and off since PC release, never as a main source of gil but as a way to burn time when I might have to ditch at any moment. It's my impression that fishing continually gets nerfed and SE has more or less given up on it. They nerf it because of botters and that keeps other people from doing legit fishing so more people bot. They nerf it again and people keep botting. Fishing is not a legit source of gil unless you get an ebisu - at this point you can get some really neat stuff but that's way too much work for a casual fisher.

/sadpanda

I had a similar question. My husband and I used to do the MMM fishing for skillups because we were guaranteed at least .2 skills per run. We stopped doing it for awhile when we became busy with other things.

Last night we went in to give it another run, and had difficulties. The large fishes, namely giant catfish and monke-onkes, were literally impossible to pull up. Once we had whittled them down to nothing and hit enter, every single time without fail we got the message 'You lost your catch due to lack of skill.' We are higher skill now than we were when we were doing this previously, and we could reel them in without difficulty back then.

Also, a point of confusion-- I thought the Angler's senses message was only for fish that were lower level than the fisher. My husband, several times, got the message that his keen angler's sense told him he had a giant catfish on his line. So, he has to be above the cap for giant catfish, right? But then every time without fail he would lose them 'due to lack of skill.' He can't be both high enough level to see the message and yet below the cap for them, can he? That seems counter-productive, to say the least.

The NPCs for the competition were also having trouble. We timed out for the first time ever because the NPCs could also not pull up the big fishes and were stuck with crayfish and copper frogs and the like.

Curiosity bump? Is anyone else having trouble with the previously easy-as-cake MMM fishing?