Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Take on C.J.’s fishing challenge, and sell fish at high prices!

Stefan L 26/03/20 Comments Closed

While there’s tons of beloved characters that have returned for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, there’s also a handful of new semi-regular visitors to your island that you won’t have met before.

C.J. is one of these new characters, a fish-obsessed beaver who’ll come to your island seeking big fish, little fish, and probably squid as well. He’ll buy them from you at much higher rates than Nook’s Cranny will, and if you want a fish-themed model, he can get his partner to make those for you as well. Not only that, but he’ll hold a seasonal Fishing Tourney, challenging you to catch as many fish as possible.

We’ve got plenty of other walkthroughs and tips for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and more on the way. Visit our game hub to check those out.

When and how to find C.J.

C.J. is one of the semi-regular characters in the game who’ll visit your island through the week, but unlike sellers like Kicks or Label who will stick to the Plaza, he’ll wander around the island. Keep an eye out for him as you’re doing your daily fossil and fruit gathering chores – we’ve most often bumped into him on a Thursday or Friday.

C.J. also hosts a Fishing Tourney once per season on the 2nd Saturday of April, July, October and January. The 2020 Spring Fishing Tourney took place on Saturday 11th April between 9AM-6PM.

For these tourneys, C.J. will be camped out on the Plaza, making him nice and easy to find.

C.J.’s Fishing Tourney Guide

The rules of the Fishing Tourney are simple: catch as many fish as you can in 3 minutes. Every fish you catch earns you points, with catching more than three netting you 2 bonus points.

Pro tip: Use fish bait to reduce time spent running around… and check out our Spring Fishing Tourney tips & ticks guide for how to catch 10 fish every attempt!

You can take on the fishing tourney as many times as you like during the day, but each entry after the first free go costs 500 Bells. For every 10 points you earn, you can trade these in with C.J. for fishing-themed swag.

Thankfully, you won’t need to worry about your inventory during this, as any fish you catch will automatically be stored in C.J.’s cooler. It stores up to 20 fish, so you’ll need to check it regularly and decide whether to take them (perhaps you caught a new fish for the museum?) or sell them to C.J. for increased profits.

What does C.J. buy?

C.J. is a fishing enthusiast, all about getting a big catch and then getting his TV audience hyped up from it. Anything that swims in the rivers and seas, he’s happy to take off your hands, and the bigger the better! He’ll happily buy fish from you at 1.5x the going rate in Nook’s Cranny.

Unless it’s a Fishing Tourney day, the one condition is that you must first complete his Seasports Challenge.

So when C.J. is around, you’d be silly to sell anything to the Nooklings, and will likely want to do as much fishing as possible in that time – get your stocks of fish bait up, so you won’t have to run around so much!

C.J.’s Seasports Challenge

Before he’ll buy your fish, C.J. insists that you complete his Seasports Challenge. This might be to catch a particular fish size, so you might need to try and catch smaller fish judging their size from their shadow in the water, but for his first visit he challenges you to catch five fish in a row, without any of them getting away from you. If you miss one, you’ll have to start all over again.

Once you’ve caught enough fish and returned to C.J., he will offer to buy whatever fish you’ve caught. From that point on you can sell him as many fish as you can catch, all with that lovely bump in profits.

C.J’s partner’s Fish Model Collectables

He will make models of any fish for you that you want, and he’ll do it for free. The only requirement is that you bring three of that particular fish to him. That’s pretty simple for common fish like carp and sea bass, but if you want something a bit more rare, you might want to store them in your home’s inventory for C.J.’s next visit.

Once he has the trio of fish in hand, he’ll then set his partner to work on that model and have it delivered to your mail box the next day.

Oh, and he’ll only work on one model at a time, so you’ll have to wait until the next time he visits if you want more.