Fishing does take a great deal of time to level, but that's because it's designed in a unique way to the rest of the professions. You can fish anywhere in the game and get skillups. Theoretically, you can go from 1-375 in Org. I don't
recommend that, but it is possible.
If you break fishing down into blocks and level as you level your hunter, it won't be so bad. I'd recommend fishing in an area low enough for the mobs to leave you mostly leave you alone. Also, once you hit 70, there's a nice daily fishing quest that gives you an added incentive to fish, gives you a nice prize package and probably enough of a challenge to get 2-3 skillups. That's not bad.
The very best food buffs in the game come from fishing. True some are matched by a meat counterpart (
grilled mudfish and
warp burgers for example). But most of the top end buffs are from fishing only (the spicy crawdads, golden fishsticks mentioned above,
blackened sporefish,
poached bluefish, and
fisherman's feast have no comparison).
So you can obviously make some good coin selling those, or make yourself VERY popular with guildies.
Granted this assumes you've leveled cooking, but that's extremely easy to do since since you have the materials on hand. But you don't need the high end products (or cooking) to make money, unlike most other professions. Almost from the beginning, you can fish stuff that folks will buy. Deviate scalefish in the Barrens are accessible from 75 (I think?). Oily blackmouths are popular with enchanters because they eventually turn into free action pots which sell very well. Most of the other pools of fish can be sold for decent profit as well.
Last, don't forget the STV fishing contest every Sunday afternoon. You can get some very nice fishing gear and skillups there as well.
So while I wouldn't exactly call fishing 'fun' per se (I'd rather be running Kara), it's an extremely valuable and profitable skill to have .