Animal Crossing Barreleye: How to catch barreleyes in New Horizons
How to find one of the rarest fish in New Horizons.
The barreleye is one of the rarer, if not the rarest, fish in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, despite being available throughout the year.
Finding this little fish can take anywhere from a couple of hours to possibly even weeks, so, once you do catch one, we highly recommend donating it to the Museum straight away.
Below you'll find everything you need to know about the barreleye in New Horizons, including when and where it will appear.
On this page:
Where and when can to catch a Barreleye in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?
The barreleye can be found at the following times and places in New Horizons:
- Barreleye months - All year round
- Barreleye times - 9pm to 4am
- Barreleye location - Sea
- Barreleye selling price - 15,000 Bells
How to catch a Barreleye in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained
While the barreleye may sound easy to catch in New Horizons, it is, in fact, one of the hardest fish to find in the game.
This is mostly due to it only being available from 9pm to 4am, which means that, if you want one, you'll have to sacrifice a good portion of your night. Thankfully, the barreleye is a sea fish, so there will be multiple spots for you to visit when hunting it down.
Unlike the majority of the rare fish in New Horizons, the barreleye appears as a small shadow in the sea, meaning that it can often be mistaken for a common fish. It also means that you should avoid running when hunting down this elusive fish, because, due to its being small and water being darker at night, you might scare the barreleye away.
The easiest way to catch a barreleye is by using fish bait, which is made from one manila clam. Bait in hand, you can find a good spot along the shore and set up camp.
We recommend fishing at the pier, because it will offer you a good view of the sea and you can easily move to get a better vantage point on a fish. A number of rare fish, including the giant trevally, tuna and blue marlin, can also only be found by fishing from the pier throughout the year, so, by this you're chosen spot, you could be donating a second rarity to your Museum.
The Animal Crossing 2.0 update and Happy Home Paradise is here! We can help you with the new additions - including where to find Brewster, Gyroids, new villagers, ordinances, new fences, storage shed, new hairstyles, Froggy Chair, group stretching and Kapp'n boat tours. Cooking is now unlockable, so you need to know how to make both flour and sugar, as well as how to grow carrots, potatoes and tomatoes. Meanwhile, if you're new to Animal Crossing, our New Horizons tips can help with the basics. From the off, there's fish and bugs to catch, flowers and fruit to grow with. One long term goal is building your Happy Home Academy score. Finally, you need tools such as the new ladder and vaulting pole to fully explore.
With any rare fish though, catching a barreleye will require a lot of patience; not only do you have to wait for the fish to appear, but it can easily escape your line if you're not quick enough. For this reason, we highly suggest doing your fish hunting in small bursts, rather than throughout a whole night.
When you've finally caught a barreleye, we suggest, depending on your time of year, trying to catch one of the other rare fish in New Horizons, including the blue marlin, giant trevally, golden trout, stringfish, sturgeon and tuna.