Dear fellow slashers!
I appreciate all the comments below my fishing guide. Thank you for the warm welcome. Here’s something extra about the cooking I’d like to share.

Who may benefit from reading this: everybody who wants at some point get more experience from cooking; especially all the players who fish and cook themselves and want the last one to keep the pace with fishing.

If you are not cooking at all or your aim is to cook faster (more fish) rather than progress faster than this post does not concern you.

terms and abbreviations:
EP - experience point(s) - here: points in cooking proficiency
FLVL - fish level
PLVL - proficiency level
CB - cook button
FCB - flame counter button
1st STAGE - somewhere between the beginning and the point that lies between ⅔ and ¾ of the total cooking distance; that is a sweet spot everybody needs to find for themselves;
it lies right after the sign that says ‘magical x fish’, where x is a kind of fish you are cooking
2nd STAGE - the last part of cooking distance

Okey. You probably discovered that the lowest fish you catch do not give you enough experience while cooking anymore. It used to be 10-13 EP per fish, now it’s only 6-9 or sometimes even 4. What makes matter even worse at some point sardines, herrings and so on you still catch (if you do it in the pond) don’t allow you to progress in cooking department at all. The effect is your cooking is left behind. This is how to counter this.

BEHOLD! THE TRUTH REAVEALED!

Toy with your fish. Let it cook as long as you can. The longer you cook the more EP you are going to score (on average). Hit deliberately the wrong button whenever you can to push yourself back.
That comes a little tricky so below are the details.

I assume in this example we are cooking the lowest FLVL that still allows you to progress in cooking at all.

1st STAGE
Start normally by clicking CB. The fish is slower than you so you will start getting ahead. Whenever you are about 2 clicks in front hit deliberately FCB to go back. Always hit FCB when you see ‘FLAMES’ in this stage. Go ahead. No worries. When the flames (sometimes come in series) are finally off you can always hit FCB again - sometimes even couple of times in the row - to go back. Remember - keep your distance. Do not let the fish outrace you. It’ll start rushing and we don’t want this.
Try to be always just a little ahead.

2nd STAGE
Going back by FCB do not accumulate to EP anymore, at least not that much. If you see ‘FLAMES’ - that's a little unlucky in this stage so you need to end this by hitting FCB there. If you are sure you can make it to the finish line first place anyway it’s better to ignore the flames in 2nd stage. In that case hit CB button and pray to be first. If you are lucky you will score a little extra by doing this.

Exeption: Crazy fish. Sometimes you will see 'flames' in large series. In this case ignore all the above rules, cook it normally and skip to the next one.
(You know the computers cannot really draw a random number so I suspect that's why 'flames' accumulate sometimes to a crazy degree).

The results (my own experience):

My lowest FLVL with cooking are trouts. If I cooked them normally, when there are couple of flames I can cook them in 4-5 clicks at this point. But I’d scored 4-5 EP. When I cook them using this method I need about 15 clicks but I still score 9-15 EP. Yesterday even 19 EP on a very lazy trout.

Let’s do some maths, shall we. You are probably going to burn some extra fish using this method but it’s still worth it. Cooking 100x fish:

(on average)
100x7 EP = 700 EP up
100x13 EP = 1300 EP up, minus 100 EP for fish you have burnt extra…

still ~600 EP extra per 100x fish on average

I hope I didn’t miss anything important here. I assure this method works. LMK wherever something is unclear for you. I’ve been practicing this one with great results for sometime now. Sadly to me I have discovered it bit too late to use my old cods to progress. It’s never too late though.
Now I prefer to cook my trouts over bass or salmon because I can score the same EP and it’s much safer to toy with your lowest ones.

That’s all folks. Hope you are going to like this little guide too. If you do, please give it thumbs up. Thanks!

Quoting Bill Nye, The Science Guy: “Stay curious!”

edit:
forgot to mention 1 thing
This method applies to fishing too. When you are at your BP or BP+1 and you got some balls you can try it. I was doing it at lvl 15-16 and 20-21!

This post was edited by mastodont on Mar 16 2019 11:49am

Knew about this for maybe a decade.

You forgot to mention that you’ll still get xp if you click stop cooking just before the fish burns. Sometimes have to do this cause sometimes it just gets the better of you, especially if you just started cooking the next up tier.

Ty for joinin' in. There's a lot of other details to be covered here but since nobody's posting back, I'm not gonna do the follow up. Also - if you wan't to do what pwb3 says you need to remember that every fish you stop is not going to be cooked 100%, hence it's going to 'spoil' the stack.
If you want to avoid this just go to the settings and disable the option.

I'm waiting to fill up a trout stack before I try it out. Sometimes that can take a while. I'm not really noticing any difference the few times I've tried it with fishing though

I'd love to help you on this. Unfortunately my soft trouts are nothing compared to your HC ones.
GL buddy

Do not expect it to work every time. You need to give it a chance. Sometimes even if you cook by this rules there will be no visible bonus. The score you get is more or less random unfortunately. However the longer you cook, the higher the chance to score extra EP. This method works for me in the long run - I need to cook at least ~50x fish to spot the difference.