Spearfishing was first introduced into Final Fantasy XIV with the Stormblood update, which was published in 2017. It has been around since then. The procedure of spearfishing is relatively easy and has stayed unaltered since it was introduced, except the requirement to be a level 61 Fisher who has accomplished certain tasks beforehand. Find teeming waters, use the spear on them, and capture fish.
[irp]
That is expected to change with the release of the Endwalker expansion and patch 6.1. As illustrated by producer Naoki Yoshida in the Letter to the Producer stream, when players go to spearfish after discovering the sparkling teeming waters areas, they will instead activate a fun little minigame – resulting in them directly harpooning the fish they catch instead of indirectly harpooning them.
The minigame is a pretty simple flash game in which the user uses a spear to pierce upwards and catch fish as they swim by — you can see it in action in the video below. However, once the time limit has expired, the location will be gone, and players will have to look for fish elsewhere if they wish to harpoon any more in the future. If this turns out to be a little more complicated than the video portrays, it will be a fun little side project to add some variety to your spearfishing experience.
[irp]
In any case, players will have to wait a little longer to get their hands on it because Endwalker has been postponed until December — here are all the specifics on the new jobs, races, raids, and other features that will be available when the expansion launches.
Reddit Reference:
Regular fishing should work more like spear fishing: ffxiv