No Angler message in the bottles, getting frustrating

[TheNightglow]

For the first 2 phases I instantly got the angler message in the bottle, for the third phase I am legitimately fishing for over 5 hours now, got way over 20 bottles and not a single one had an angler message
when opened none of them counted towards the milestone progress

It is really getting frustrating
I am fishing at the secret fishing spot the game told me to go to
I tried fishing at low depths for a high trash chance
I tried fishing at high depths
I tried fishing with and without bait
I tried restarting and verifying game files

is there anything else I can do? I am completely out of ideas now

[ShadowTani]

I got them all on almost the first try, except one which took nearly a dozen attempts. Though I primarily fished in deep areas, nothing less than 10u, so perhaps it isn't considered a trash item? I also went full casual on this and exclusively used only mealworm as bait throughout the entire expedition. I also always had the expedition quest selected before I made the attempt, in case that matters. Most likely you just spent all your luck for the day and the RNG decided to get extra heavy on the lower rolls.

[Krastifari]

Don't give up!

[Asulox]

Don't bait your hook, it'll appear quicker.

[Stik Figure]

At Phase 3 I had to sit there and fish while I got notified every time someone else caught the message. Started to think I was in the wrong place.

I wasn't. RNG just had it out for me.

[mfan2k2]

Make sure that's the active milestone. I fished up several generic message bottles on the phase 3 planet before I realized I had a different active milestone. Once I switched it, the next bottle had the angler message.

[Mist of Majora]

I'll echo what ShadowTani said, but with a fun added catch (pun intended I guess).

Make sure the Message in a Bottle goal is active - I caught over 30-40 fish and 3 bottles at the 2nd phase target, none of which triggered the achievement. Then I finally tried setting that quest as active and got it in a few more casts nearby.

The 'catch' is that I went to the NEXT Message quest in the 3rd expedition phase's tier, set that as active, and caught THAT bottle in the same spot. Then did it for the last one, despite a warning that I was on the wrong planet, and caught that as well haha. So in other words, I managed to catch all 3 bottles, got credit for 3 different Message in a Bottle quests, in the SAME lake, just by setting them as 'active'.

Hope this helps and makes things easier for you all

[TheNightglow]

oh, hang on how do I set a milestone as my active quest? for all the other phases it did this automatically and I had a quest saying to catch an Angler message, but the only quest I see in my journal right now is "Complete all phase 3 milestones"

unlike the first 2 phases I dont see the milestones themself as quests anymore

EDIT:
omg thank you all so much, I didnt realize you can create a quest log for a milestone by double clicking it in the expedition
I double clicked the angler message milestone, this created it as a trackable quest, then I tracked the quest and the first bottle I caught was instantly the angler message in a bottle I needed, took less then 2 minutes of fishing