Can I really fish a feebas on route 2?

According to online sources like Bulbapedia, it's possible to fish a Feebas on route 2, with a 1% rate.

I tried for a while (at least 250 tries), on both fishing spots around the island in the middle of the lake, and I got nothing. I've caught other 1% pokémon and they were never this long.

I've seen other people struggling as well online, so I'm suspecting you need a condition to make it possible, like an item, a badge or something (I have all badges but haven't done the Battle Tower yet).

Should I just keep trying or do I need to do something in particular?

_{This question is not "How to get a Feebas?", it's "Is it possible to fish a Feebas on route 2?".}

Solution 1:

The base spawn rates are what they are without any additional effects, and badges/Battle Tower have no impact on spawn rates at all. Certain abilities can make encounters more likely but aren't required for the encounter to be possible in the first place.

A 1% chance is simply low enough that streaks of bad luck become more likely. As Chase Sandmann said in a comment, you have about an 8% chance of not getting a 1% encounter after 250 tries. So about 1 out of every 12-13 players would have the same bad luck you had or worse, which is why you see so many other accounts of it happening. But it's the same odds as, say, not getting a 1/512 shiny after ~1300 eggs, and I've seen countless players complain about far worse dry streaks than that.

The spawn rates on Bulbapedia and other sources come directly from disassembling the game code, so unless there's a bug in the game they are correct.