fish rods are glitchy, y'know, where you're fishing yourself and the damn fish hook keeps derping up and down and getting stuck everywhere unless you've a huge pool or are standing very far from the water.
fish nets is an option, but they only really work efficiently if you've alot of them, which require a large pool of water, which is not possible early game, as your 2x3 pool is as good as it's going to get. and if you reach the stage where you can increase the pool size, you'll already have another source of food by that time