Fishing RNG... Really!?

[Garlyle]

I don't see why this would necessarily have to be the case when they're already basically as high as BTN/MIN's are

It's not accidental that the difficulties of obtaining the largest fish are set to what they are right now. Yes, it would help with current fish - and all future fish in turn would be based around having it. The devs are fully aware of what the potential stat caps for Fishing are, and they've chosen time and time again to set the 'final test' for "Yeah, you're going to need almost perfect". That trend would likely just continue, because that's the intent they have demonstrated so far.

as indicated by the fact how even with BiS everything for FSH you can and will continuously lose big fish, and not even just the most difficult ones.

If fish were intended to be in any way a guaranteed catch, they'd have very different mechanics from what they have now, if not solely in terms of the rate vs minimum-to-catch lenience they would have given us. It's not BTN/MIN.

You act like this is supposed to help FSH somehow.

It does. If we're not spending money on GP materia/higher level materia so we have space for GP materia, we can, for the same amount of functional/financial investment as BTN/MIN, come closer to our max potential. That's what's being factored in.

What I wanna stress here though is something I've brought up before on the subject of Fisher off-hands: Those things eat money to meld well. Adding one "for more stats" sounds nice, but frankly, it just makes the investment floor higher. The desired end result - having more reliable catches on the most difficult fish - doesn't require the implementation of an off-hand, but rather a change in the way these catch rates and requirements are being set to begin with.

i had about 330 gathering on mine, got the titanic sawfish to appear, and lost it because "gathering skill was too low"

Titanic should not have that message appear at 330 gathering. However, there's a new fish that can appear under certain conditions that has an absolutely massive Gathering requirement, and that would have prompted the message.