Caught my first Titanic Sawfish last night

I know its not really that big of a deal but it was AWESOME! It was all tugging on my line and stuff and I knew how big it was so i stood up to get it to shore and I was all like WOOSH whipping my rod this way and that, and then BLAM !!!

It was right @ 12:05pm
Used the Spinnich gathering/percep food
I think if i remember right I was around 272 Gathering and like 240ish perception.
Used Rat Tail bait and it was Clear outside.

So i turned the Fish in for the quest only to get told now i have to catch a Big One. And now i dont have enough gathering with my current gear to catch it. Question is, should I spend money on the melds to get that gathering or should I just wait until the expansion comes out. I have helm, chest, legs, boots, and gloves of the HQ fishing gear and pretty crappy accessories. Do the rings/neck/earings that give +GP raise your gathering lvl or no?

Best bet for fishing accessories is to just buy battle accessories and then meld them with gathering stats as far as I know. This only applies to fishing since you don't need GP though, so those accessories won't be any good for mining/botany. I haven't fished for a long time though so maybe they've changed the meld caps or something.

I think whether it's worth it or not is really up to you. If you're having a good time with fishing and have a goal to catch the big fish or something then go for it. If you're trying to make a gil profit then no I don't think it will be worth it.

Consider the expansion is not out yet, it is hard to give information that we dont know... whether the new sets are easily obtainable or require pre-reqs.

As for accessories you can meld gathering and perception to the them but depending on what you want to do. The current best accessories for fishing are the i70 crafted accessories you use for battle classes. However people also choose to share accessories with other gathering classes that use the i55 crafted gathering accessories.

HQ fishing set isn't going to get you that far even if you fully meld them. You will have to look for HQ melded Forager Set and a Supra or Lucis rod as some of the legendary fish requires 400+ gathering to even land a catch

I still haven't caught one of those...

As for your gear, you should be able to meld it for relatively minimal cost - if you're not doing Botanist/Miner, you can forgo the GP melds, and focus solely on Perception and Gathering, which saves a LOT of money, especially on the accessories. Actually, for those accessories, you can use item level 70 combat accessories - those have a higher Gathering/Perception cap (5 as opposed to 4 on Dodore), and since you don't need GP as a Fisher anyway that doesn't matter.

Fishing is supposed to be fun. But if you want the best stuff for fishing you'll want to be a 4 star crafter so you can make it yourself. If you like fishing, just go ahead and do it now. If your doing it for profit ro something, than yeah go ahead and wait.