Well, I finally had the time to start this yesterday. Legend III (my character) has been in the valley for about 11 days and is working on figuring out how to make money without fishing. I've decided that I'm going to completely bypass the fish pond because getting 5 seaweed from trash cans is going to take waaaaaaaaay too long. Befriending Linus is a slow process for the wild bait, but I'm definitely making progress. I made it down to floor 55 of the mines and have about 70 potatoes ready to harvest on the 13th, just in time for strawberries to be planted. I will continue to update you guys as I make progress.
I am at the beginning of summer now. Found the cockle for the crab pot bundle the day after writing my post here, so complaining did work ;)
I still haven't found a single seaweed in trash cans, so I went fishing for it and just cancelled the Minigame everytime it came up. Now I have a pond with one crab in it. The trash can gave me two sun fish, and I have a catfish from the traveling cart. Maybe it'll get used for more fish ponds.
I have fishing level 1 from the crab pots which I just put behind the house for easy reach (river farm). Bait is a bit of a problem, because Linus recipe needs fibre and I was also making tea saplings so fibre is scarce. Tea saplings do give insane amounts of money for the beginning though.
Got to level 100 or 105 in the mine, have the pickaxe upgraded to gold, hoe and axe to steel. Still waiting for a rainy day to upgrade the watering can.
I found an ancient seed in spring which will produce the first fruit soon. I built a coop on one of the islands.
Which farm are you using? I second Lew on the gifts for Linus, gold or silver gifts are possible with forage. I think it took me until the fourth week of spring to get his recipe.