It would take a while to explain, (And you don't want to see me take a while to explain. Trust me, my posts can get long enough as it is.
) and to be quite honest, I feel a lot of people wouldn't even understand. It really does require an advanced knowledge of all the little quirks of Minecraft and it's PvP mechanics...Put quite simply: I feel people are just limiting themselves to the "stunning" ability of the rod and not attempting to explore it's other advantages that, if you really took the time to think about, can be lifesavers. It's even just the simple things like knocking people into walls or away from the water on breeze island so you can close in from the center that I've seen very, very few people actually do in comparison to the amount of fishing rod users I've seen. In this way, I feel I use the fishing rod as a movement manipulator on enemies to predict and control their movements rather than some sort of projectile that stuns temporarily.