(Possible spoilers)

I have the lemon, the feather, and the match, and I know I need a fish, but I can't tie the hook to the damn broken rod. It drives me insane that I can't just go to the thread shop for that.

Basically, how do I fix the fishing rod? :'(

Edit: The solution is below BUT sometimes it seems to just glitch and you may need to restart the game before it will actually work.

I actually tried that, and it turned out that it was just something wrong with the game. I gave up after mashing everything in my inventory onto the thread person and also onto their wares and turned the game off. Then I came back and it worked.

If the game hadn't already been fairly glitchy, I'd have assumed that I simply made a mistake and had clicked wrong or something. But I've already had sound and graphical glitches with this game, so I'm giving myself the benefit of the doubt.

I had a similar problem with getting the lemon: The solution was something I thought of almost instantly but I did it in the wrong season and for some stupid reason thought I had already tried it in the other season (but I hadn't). That ended up getting me stuck for 3 hours, no joke. It was extremely baffling and frustrating but I realized I was just too tired and not paying enough attention so it wasn't the game's fault, just my own lack of concentration. You should have seen my incredibly sour lemon face when I was like hm wait I tried that already...or have I.... *facepalm*