> - Control+R. It is annoying to have to guess how much you must type before hitting the up arrow, instead of having it dynamically displayed

It's not anyone's cup of tea, but I'm using percol to get similar functionality:

(taken from oh-my-fish)

* pip install percol

* make a function like this:

    function percol_select_history
       history|percol|read foo
       if [ $foo ]
           commandline $foo
       else
           commandline ''
       end
    end

* bind new function to Ctrl+r:

    function fish_user_key_bindings
        bind \cr percol_select_history
    end

... and you'll have a searchable history list. To me, together with fish's command completion, it's more powerful than ctrl+r in bash/zsh.