Fishing itself is a bit awkward, in comparison to mining/botany. There's no way to see exactly how your stats will effect anything with a fish, for example. All we're told is a vague 'Perception increases your HQ rate.' Players themselves had to figure out that you need higher gathering to catch larger fish, and since an HQ fish is usually larger than an NQ fish that means players need to increase both gathering AND perception in order to increase their chance at actually landing that HQ fish. With mining/botany, we can see our exact gathering rates and our % chance to get an HQ item. There's even an ability that flatout increases that HQ chance.
Patience is the fishing equivalent of that ability, though with an added downside of reducing your chance to gather (because SE is a bit... insane, when it comes to all of Fishing.)
I don't fish much anymore, but when I did I would've loved Patience because 50% is a large enough leap to overcome its downside (needing to use an ability to counteract the reduced gathering rate,) but I can very easily see how it's not for everybody