·         Jig causes your character to move their rod in such a way as to try to either hook the fish (if you don't have one on the line) or to try to weaken the fish in order to reel it in.

Believe it or not, you can actually hook fish immediately after your line sinks to the proper depth before you even have a bite. I did it once, but the hook rate is abysmal and I don't recommend it. My normal pattern of fishing is:

Set Depth >> Begin Fishing >> Wait for bite >> Jig to Hook >> Jig to Weaken Until Caught.

There are various messages you get while jigging once you have the fish hooked that I will go into detail about later on.

In the beta, there isn't much available by way of rods. The Weathered Fishing Rod is good enough for now. Trade "weapons" include a rank in their description and I can only assume that higher ranked rods help you hook your fish while also helping keep the fish on longer while you try to tire it out.

A wide variety of bait is available with each being either consumable (worms, etc) and reusable (lures and jigs). In the beta, I had my best luck with plain old Lugworms. I also had decent luck with a Floating Minnow. I did NOT have good luck with a Chocobo Fly, no matter what depth I chose. To me, a fly is for river fishing, so I don't know if that was my problem (I spent all my time fishing in the sea off of Camp Bearded Rock).

Bait is relatively cheap, and you only lose your consumable bait if you hook the fish, so feel free to experiment.

Fishing in FFXIV is essentially a hot and cold game, as are all of the Disciple of Land classes. There are three parts to the mini game:

I think where most people have trouble is the actual hooking of the fish. You get a bite every cast, so the trick is figuring out how to hook the fish you have nibbling at your bait. I have some ideas on how this works and I will explain what my theory is, but I would like to point out that this is pure speculation on my part. I started to keep a log of my hook rate, but I don't have enough data to conclusively prove anything yet. That being said, I think it is a good theory, and hopefully if other people try it and report their results, we can come up with a conclusive method that works for most.

There are effectively two actions you can perform once you start fishing: Wait or Jig.

·         Waiting after you get an initial bite will cause you to wait for another bite. I never do this, as I think I only ever got one hooked when waiting after the first bite. Your results may vary.