With the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players across the world have started to enjoy their life on an island paradise. With many new features like terraforming for fans to play around with, Animal Crossing players are overloaded with different things to do. But, there is value in simple activities such as the time-tested activity of capturing different local fauna. Of course, with the player being situated on an island, there will be an abundance of fish and other aquatic animals for them to collect.
Since players will be living on a tropical island, they are bound to find many different kinds of sea-life. While there are many different fish to catch in Animal Crossing, like the very rare and valuable oarfish, they aren't the only ocean-dwellers. As players continue to collect fish, they'll eventually run into a shark if luck is on their side. Since sharks are considerably harder to catch, rarer, and more valuable than any run-of-the-mill fish, they're a useful find for any player.
Thankfully, aside from the fact that they are rare, sharks aren't too difficult to catch. Once the player gets used to fishing in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and eventually finds a shark, catching one is really no different than catching fish. Here's how to do it.
How To Catch A Shark
The first thing a player needs to look out for are visual cues. Sharks are bigger than most fish; however, fish can also be rather big, so size is not the best way to tell if something's a shark. The biggest thing to keep an eye out for when looking for sharks is a fin above the shadow in the water. This is the main visual difference between sharks and fish—if there is a fin, then it's a shark.
In terms of actually fishing for a shark in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it's not really much different than fishing for any normal fish. To catch a shark, the player only needs to pull their line in when a shark bites down. Really, catching a shark gets tricky because the timing to catch one is different.
With sharks, the lure goes down much more quickly than with other fish, so the player needs to press A with quick timing in order to catch one. If fish, and therefore sharks, aren't coming up as quickly as one would like, craft and use some fishing bait in order to keep the pace up.
One more thing to keep in mind is when and where sharks can be found. Sharks must be found in the ocean, whether it be on the player's home island or one of the randomly generated islands players can fly to. If cliffs are blocking the ocean on a particular side of the island, the player can climb over them with help from the ladder tool.
In regards to when, all four sharks in the game—the whale shark, great white shark, hammerhead shark, and saw shark—are only found in the ocean exclusively during summer months, which vary based on the hemisphere the player chose at the beginning of the game. Whale and hammerhead sharks are able to be found all day, while great white sharks and saw sharks can only be found from 4 PM to 9 AM. For players who'd like to complete Blathers' museum, this is all very important to keep in mind.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.
