Animal Crossing: New Horizons – How to Catch Whale Sharks

What’s your favorite fish? If you’re like me then your answer is quick and easy: the whale shark. The largest fish in the world has finally arrived for northern hemisphere players in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. You’re definitely gonna want to catch these guys too, since they’re worth a ton of Bells and are key to completing your museum collection. But what do they look like in the water? Where and when are they found? Here’s how to catch Whale Sharks in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

How to Catch Whale Sharks

Unlike the other sharks in the game, Whale Sharks will appear in the ocean anytime of the day. Others, such as Great White Sharks only pop up between 4pm and 9am. What this means is you can focus on catching Whale Sharks by fishing outside of these hours, starting at 10am and fishing until just before 4pm. They begin appearing in the northern hemisphere in June and go away in September, while the southern hemisphere has them from December to March. Now that you know when and where they appear, you just need to know what to look for.

As the Whale Shark is the biggest fish in the ocean, you would likely expect it to have a massive shadow appear on the surface of the water in the game. You’d be right, but more than that, all sharks in New Horizons have a dorsal fin that protrudes above the shadow’s back, so you know there’s something good to catch. Unfortunately there’s nothing else to distinguish them from what you can see, so whenever you spot one of these there is a chance it is a Whale Shark, though it could also be a Great White or Hammerhead.

So that’s how to catch Whale Sharks in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Once you catch your first you probably want to donate it to Blathers’ museum to try to complete the collection. After that they can be sold to Nook’s for 13,000 Bells, though CJ will pay 50% more or turn three of them into a collectible model.