As for the fishing.....I recently discovered, that it doesn't really seem to matter whether or not you use bait. (with the exception of fishing for the deathfish) Once my sims got up to a level 10 in fishing, they were still able to catch "perfect" fish even with just using the lure. So when I found that out, I thought, "Hey that's much easier...I'll just let them use the lure and not worry about the bait" and it has worked out just fine for me.