An Old School RuneScape player hit 99 Fishing on shrimp and anchovies alone

A player known as Bosby has reached level 99 Fishing in Old School RuneScape catching nothing but shrimp and anchovies, and the game's official X account has verified the run, IGN reports.

Both are the lowest-level fish in the game, and both require the Small Fishing Net, one of the first tools a player is given. The net cannot catch anything larger than small prey such as shrimp, minnows, monkfish and anchovies, works only at certain fishing spots, and is the only way to catch shrimp at all - which is what made the challenge possible and slow.

Bosby created the account, aptly named OnlyShrimp99, on May 11, 2024, and finished on August 7, 2026, two years and three months later. He logged 4,304 hours on the project, averaging roughly 3,000 experience an hour because of how AFK the method is, and wrote up the process on Reddit.

The arithmetic is the point. Level 99 Fishing requires 13,034,431 experience. Shrimp award 10 points each and anchovies 40, so Bosby caught 275,196 raw shrimp and 257,064 raw anchovies to get there. He banked all of them rather than dropping them, keeping the entire haul in storage.

He wrote that he started out expecting it to be something funny to do and ended up with the dedication to finish, and that across the span of the account he started a new job, got married and made friends, many of them at the Al Kharid fishing spot. He described it as a second-monitor project and said he would miss catching the fish now that he has the screen space back.

Bosby posted the level 99 on August 8 and the run spread quickly, drawing a response from the official Old School RuneScape account, which drew a shrimp in the game's polygonal style for him and said its data team had verified the accomplishment. He has floated using bronze daggers to reach level 99 Smithing next, but has not committed to it.