Kind of a mixed bag in my opinion.

On the plus side, you have the trophies. They even drop you a silly line () from time to time.

But apart from the angler- and pufferfish the variety of fish really doesn't have much of a purpose right now.

Another issue is that the amount of bait you get from crafting was reduced by half (from 40 to 20) which can be a potential bottleneck due to the relative rarity of some of the required trophies like the serpent trophy. Making tuna ocean-biome exclusive further adds to that problem.

Also, you get fishing xp for reeling in meters.
But the easiest and most reliable ways to catch even high tier fish require you to actually not reel in at all.