Fish Flingers

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To the north of the Fishing Guild is a peaceful island named Isla Anglerine, to which many species of rare fish flock. Why they do is unknown, but it makes the island a paradise for budding fishermen. Discovering this, representatives of the Fishing Guild have arranged for regular fishing competitions to be held there, in which those with a love of angling can prove their skill in a race to land the most and the heaviest catches.


There are no requirements to enter a Fish Flingers competition, so long as you have a competition entry ticket. Everyone gets ten entry tickets per week, but more can sometimes be found during a competition.


Several times each day, fishermen from the Fishing Guild will turn up on Catherby beach, and both inside and outside of the guild itself. They'll be recognisable from their fashionable blue dungarees and an overpowering smell of fish. Simply talk to one of these fishermen and they'll inform you how long it is until the next Fish Flingers competition, how many entry tickets you have and other general information.

From five minutes before the event is about to begin, they'll also give any who ask a hint about the upcoming competition and teleport you to Isla Anglerine. You'll arrive on the island within a gated waiting area on the docks along with all the other entrants, but you won't have to wait too long for the gates to open and for the competition to begin. You'll then have fifteen minutes to catch fish, and the more fish that you catch and the heavier they are, the more points you will score in the competition.


All entrants are provided with a tackle box containing all the bait, hooks and weights required - there's no need to bring anything with you; the contents of your tackle box will be displayed instead of your inventory. Before going into detail about the tackle box, though, your first decision will be which habitat you fish in - docks, lake, river or beach. Different species of fish will be found in each of these habitats, and you'll be wanting to try them all to find out where the best fish are if you want to score well. That will be the case for each competition you take part in, too, as the location of the best fish will differ between competitions. There are six species of fish to keep an eye out for: bass, cod, herring, pike, salmon and trout.

Once at a fishing habitat, the next thing to do is prepare your line with some bait, a hook and some weights. You will need to experiment at each spot to find the perfect tackle to land each species, adjusting what bait, hook and weights you attach to your line. Once done, you'll need to cast out your line to begin fishing. It's more than likely that how you've initially prepared your line will not be perfect for catching the fish at your current habitat, so you'll then need to fine tune each aspect until you discover the perfect tackle to land prize specimens of each species of fish.

Once the competition begins, you'll notice an interface appearing at the top of the game window, which is used to track information about the fish you catch. On the far left, your overall progress is covered by the weight of the heaviest fish you've caught so far, and how many fish you've caught and what they weigh in total. Specific information about your last catch is shown to the right of that, showing what species it was, where it was caught, how much it weighed, then the bait, hook and casting range you used. Finally, the 'Rating' column gives you an idea of how suitable the tackle you used was in that habitat. As you try different baits, hooks and weights, you'll see this number increase as you get more components correct, with the aim of getting your rating up to 100%. Clicking 'Show All' will expand this information to your last six catches.


There are eight different types of bait, with each bait sharing a common property with two other types of bait (be that colour or shape). If you find that, say, using worms increases your rating a bit, you should next try either shrimp or maggots to see if either of those increase your rating further. How each bait type compares to the others is as follows:

Bait		Similar colour		Similar shape
Worms		Shrimp		Maggots
Maggots		Cricket		Worms
Cricket		Maggots		Locust
Locust		Green moth		Cricket
Green moth		Locust		Grey moth
Grey moth		Crayfish		Green moth
Crayfish		Grey moth		Shrimp
Shrimp		Worms		Crayfish

There are six different types of hook, which work in a similar way to bait. At each habitat, one of the six hooks will give you the best rating increase, but a similar hook will still improve your rating slightly. The hooks compare as follows:

Standard	is similar to	Slim
Large	is similar to	Double
Bone	is similar to	Wooden

Weights work a little bit differently from bait and hooks. They come in three sizes - small (1kg), medium (2kg) and large (5kg) - and you can attach up to five weights to your line (in any combination) to extend your casting range. The heavier your line, the further you can cast, giving you a range between 1-7 metres. You'll find that one range will improve your rating a little, but the optimal range will improve your rating by more.

Total weight added		Casting range
1-4kg		1m
5-8kg		2m
9-12kg		3m
13-16kg		4m
17-19kg		5m
20-22kg		6m
23-25kg		7m

Once you've discovered the best tackle for each of the six species, you should make note of the average weight of the fish you are catching. You may then want to try to find the best tackle to catch the other species, to see if their average weight is higher - the more heavy fish that you land, the greater your score will be.

You don't, however, have to do everything yourself, as you're welcome to share any information you find out about each habitat, and which habitat is best, with your fellow entrants. Some clans and groups of friends may wish to do this to improve all of their scores, but beware that not all entrants will be so altruistic and may feed you misinformation to improve their own chances of winning.


When your fifteen minutes of floundering is over, you and the other entrants will be returned to the waiting area and your scores totted up. The top five scoring players will also find themselves on the winners' podium, where they can give a cheer or take a bow. Your score is derived from the total weight of all the fish you caught, how many you caught, how many fish you found the perfect tackle for, and how many medals and awards you earned.

Medals can be earned by any entrant by fulfilling one of the following criteria:

• Junior Angler - Find the perfect tackle for three species
• Master Angler - Find the perfect tackle for all six species
• Efficient Fisher - Obtain an average catch rating of 80% or higher
• Heavy Catch - At least 80% of fish caught being of the heaviest species

Awards, however, are only handed out to the best of the best in any given competition, though if more than one entrant obtains an equal total they will each receive the award:

• Heaviest fish caught
• Most fish caught
• Heaviest catch total

The 'Competition Results!' interface also has a second tab called 'Details', which gives you information on all six fish species from the recently ended competition. This is mostly for the curious, as this information will not be of use in the next competition. This tab also details your personal best scores and your Fish Flingers career total to date.

Depending upon your score, and based on your current Fishing level, you will receive some Fishing XP. You will also earn a number of fish tokens, which you can spend at the fisherman's wife's reward shop in exchange for raw fish or tackle boxes. The various tackle boxes could prove to be very useful to keen fishers, as they have room to tidily store a range of fishing equipment, as shown below.

Tackle box		Tool slots*		Bait slots~ (bait per slot)		Glove slots^
Beginner's tackle box		1		1 (150)		0
Basic tackle box		2		1 (250)		0
Standard tackle box		3		2 (400)		0
Professional's tackle box		4		3 (650)		1
Champion's tackle box		5		3 (1000)		2

^*Can store small/big fishing nets, normal/fly/oily/barbarian fishing rods, normal/barb-tailed/sacred clay harpoons and lobster pots.
^~Can store normal and stripy feathers, normal bait and fish parts.
^{^}Can store swordfish and shark gloves (Fist of Guthix rewards), and Cooking gauntlets (Family Crest reward).


Developer: Rod C
Graphics: Matthew M
QA: Dan G, Daniel O, James H
Audio: Adam B

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