Mayor vs side character??

[Aeikurin]

Does anyone actually know if it impacts what you can catch, whether you're on your mayor or on a side character? I've been trying to get a tarantula/scorpion for days but my mayor is having no luck.

I finally just caught a walking leaf today after 3 days of searching, but my side character has been getting all the rare fish no problem (such as gar, arapaima, giant snakehead)

Feels kinda like a dumb question but does it actually matter??

 

[Underneath The Stars]

I don't think it should. The reason I'm confident saying that is because me & my sister plays regularly and she plays the side character. She catches fish I haven't, I also catch something she hasn't donated and vice versa, but sooner or later we'd catch it eventually. Bugs & fishes are just random. If you leave that area it would refresh so quick anyway. Like, I keep seeing tarantula/scorpion but then I either have no space in my pockets or happen to have all my tools on the ground by the beach, this happened several times due to landscaping or diving trick. If I go to the beach anyway to pick up the net it would be gone. So I just let it go hoping I'd catch it again next time.

 

[pikopika]

Your mayor and side characters all have separate save files so it does not matter. Do you have different birthdays for each of them? The birthday affects the character's lucky item for the day (if you happen to use that feature) that helps increase high value bugs, fish, diving creature spawn rates.

 

[Cheery Delight]

After wandering why I kept tripping & falling on my face numerous times when I first started playing, I started researching the subject of luck and found out a few things that seem to have helped a lot.

Good luck can be influenced by clothing, Feng Shui, and a fixed game variable that changes every day (also known as the fortune for the day).
So now I use the Lovely Phone everyday, it provides extremely useful information about which lucky item will influence my in-game experiences each day; the Lovely Phone is a prize won from Redd's booth during the August Fireworks show, so be sure to attend and grab yourself one if you haven't got one yet, or visit Katrina for your daily reading if you have her shop on mainstreet.

I'm not as committed to the Feng Shui part though lol, but wearing my lucky item seems to work well enough for me.