Because doing shellfish is annoying as hell on larger scale i propose a new system.
1. New item 'Bait core'
2. Traps stay the same but get an additional separate slot for bait core.
3. Bait core will have duration of 24h and will start to degrade after being put in bait core slot of a shellfish trap.
4. During 24h duration, shellfish will attempt to feed on a bait core and be caught or not be caught depending on variables.
5. Bait core can be crafted with a mix of meat and flour. Depending of the 'bile color' that meat and flour have bait cores would be more effective for certain type of shellfish and less effective for others.
6. Using special ingredients in a bait core would increase the chance of shellfish getting caught. Those ingredients would be snails /caterpillars /beetles and grubs. Keep in mind that grubs are hardest to obtain without digging or lifting boulders. Reason for that is that their coresponding bile color is yellow and they would affect lobsters , therefore, harder obtainability. Worms would give give a generic chance to all shellfish up to 6% on each shellfish.
That is for people who just want to catch a bulk of everything.
7.Using 2 ingredients with the same bile color would increase the chance of corresponding shellfish to be atracted by 25% but using two different ones would affect 15% each.
8. Using a special ingredient would increase the chance of corresponding shellfish to be caught by 25%. You can use only one special ingredient per bait core.
9.Shellfish spawn locations should remain unchanged.
10. bait cores can be also crafted from Cabbage and flour with the same principle applied. For people who do not have time to hunt or cant hunt stronger animals.
My reasoning for this idea is to:
Be able to produce and store bait cores since they are just 1 slot each. We would not have to keep hundreds of fields with cabbage on them or animals in sleds so we could butcher them when we need the bait.
You save time and space like that on the long run and thats a good thing.
There is no reason to check shellfish traps twice a day. Most of us have just outposts on the sea so we need to transfer bait and shellfish back and forth all the time. It is very annoying.
Faster filling the traps. Just one click and they are full instead of scroling items in.
We are able to target certain shellfish that we need to farm instead of being at the mercy of RNG.
All of this combined makes doing shellfish traps faster, less of a chore and more rewarding overall without being to overpowered.
P.S.
Jeez i hope i did not read someones mind and stole this idea.