Fishing Stats Question

[Baneus]

I'm pretty sure Gathering affects the range/variation of fish you can catch at a pool as well as the ability. In same cases, if you're after a specific type of fish, having a high Gathering stat can actually work against you.

[Bardo]

I don't think that's true based on the little testing I've been able to do so far.

Here's how I tested:
Use Oschon's Torch as an example. It contains level 7,8,10,12,15,17 and 50 fish that all bite on a yumizuno lure. And the level 50 fish has a unique animation so you can tell when you get a bite even if you can't pull it in.
If I put on around 20 gathering, I can pull in the 7,8,10 fish, but I get a ton of "fish got away" messages.
If I put on around 50 gathering, now I pull in 7,8,10,12,15,17 fish, but still get "fish got away" messages from Mahi catches.

If +gathering affected the range of fish that would actually bite, I should see no Mahi bites while my gathering is low, or I should see less sea cucumbers when my +gathering is high.
Correct?
I'm just not seeing that.
To me, it appears that the lure is the only factor that determines the variety of fish you can catch at a location, gathering only affects if you can pull in a catch or not, and perception affects HQ rates.


Of course the high/low level catch ratio could be changing slightly as I put on more gathering, but I would have to fish thousands of fish at that location to have a decent dataset to draw that conclusion.
I just don't have that kind of time :X

There's got to be a better way to test.