With limited food/farming I assume one must learn to fish before you can support a population of more than 15 people or so... how do I learn this... Please tell me also.. if the field in the upper right hand corner of the screen is the one where the flowers grow.

You need to increase your Farming skill (level 3 is fishing).

You can probably survive quite a while without fishing if you have quite a few farmers and don't get any adverse events -- you can probably get level 2 in quite a few other skills first -- just make sure the farmers clear the field quickly and go back to research when they are done.