Fishing rods : Insufficient attributes to make up for the lack of secondary tool

Date & Time: Always
Frequency: Always
World name: All
Character name: All
Class/Level: Fisher(50)
Steps:
1. Try to fish appropriately leveled rare fishes with appropriate gear from the same game expansion (level 50 rare fishes with level 50 ARR gear)
2. Notice the great lack of gathering and perception compared to the miner and the botanist
3. Impossible to catch the higher level rare fish without the very best gear of the expansion in HQ when available and full of gathering materias to the limit of each equipment piece as well as with the best HQ gathering food you can make with the same level as a culinarian. And i haven't tried them all so maybe some are simply impossible to catch without being overgeared from a following expansion.



To be more specific, unlike the difference made in stats and attributes for fighting classes & jobs between those with 1-hand weapon + shield and those with 2-hand weapons which properly distribute the attributes either fully on the 1 weapon or divided on both the weapon and the shield (similarly with armor pieces that take more than 1 equipment slot), the fisher's fishing rod doesn't follow that logic.

Where all crafting classes as well as both the miner and botanist use a main tool and a secondary tool, the fisher is the only one to use only 1 tool, the fishing rod, but it's stats and attributes are identical to the main tools of other gathering classes and doesn't make up for the lack of secondary tool, the result of which is a very big lack of gathering and perception attributes for the fisher. This gap remain through all game expansions, forcing fishers to use equipment from the following expansion to even have a decent chance at catching their current expansion rare fishes.

In the end as a level 50 fisher with the very best HQ gear available to level 50 fishers you're lacking 82 to 96 gathering attributes and 143 to 168 perception attributes depending on materias compared to both the miner and botanist (taken from a 3 star HQ crafted Forager's Scythe/Sledgehammer) which is a whole lot (about 25% of max attributes), so the fisher is limited to about only 75% of the max gathering and perception attributes available to both miner and botanist.

Considering that the singular spear fishing gig in the game is from a level 62 quest and only has GP on it it can be inferred that the lack of stats on it was not a factor for their calculations.

At the very least, 2.x and 3.x were not tuned with an offhand in mind since it didn’t exist until 4.0.

A max melded forager set with a halcyon rod Lucis has 392 gathering, 306 perception and 632 GP. The melds are extremely easy to do as you’d only need to overmeld accessories and that’s if you wanted max GP on them. These stats are without food as well.

Ignoring all of that, the highest gather requirement fish you can get in 2.x era needs 403+ gathering which you can easily hit with food from that era or beyond. And in order to get the lucis tool you need at least 349 gathering.

Lastly, basically anything that is and an expansions cap (50/60/70/80) was intended for players that were at that expansions level cap and not meant as a progression route for leveling. Getting the lucis and HQ melded forager set is highly inefficient when you can power to 51(or higher) with the diadem or leves and get superior gear.

To add, Rare and "Big" fish only require a threshold of stats to "unlock" and then have a fixed percentage chance of spawning and successfully catching.
As in, even a maxed stat & gear / maxed melds / maxed plus buffs L80 fisher can still fail to get one to spawn and fail to land the catch with the same percentages as a fisher with just enough stats to trigger it.
HQ percentages however, are tied to stats and specific fishing skills so lower stats = less chance to catch HQ.

Keep in mind that each content expansion during it's time was "end game", so L50 rare/big fish were meant for L50 "max" fishers and were catch-able by those in that game level with gear/buffs from that game level.
Yes, there is some benefit by being over leveled for the fishing hole you are at, but anything in that water can be caught as long as your stats are at least of the level to unlock it.

As for the differences between having two high stat tools for Botanist and Miner as compared to one high stat tool and a fairly "weak" offhand for Fisher, the stat threshold for Fishing is already much lower as compared to botany/mine nodes of a similar "level", so the comparison is moot... apples to oranges so to speak.