Hot take: fishing rods are incredibly underrated for earlygame kits (1.9+)
I know fishing rods are kinda seen as a meme "weapon" for modern pvp but I genuinely think it's actually pretty decent, particularly in earlygame kits without many mobility options like pearls or lunge. Since in those kits there isn't really any way to close the distance when chasing someone, being able to hook then and kill their momentum can really help close the gap, and if you time it well with their jump you can even pull them quite a bit.
(I also think they're pretty underrated for speedrunning since being able to skip building out a spawner after a blaze bed means better overlap time but that's a different discussion entirely)