Started a save for someone called Smee, whose one goal is to catch Legend in year 1.
Smee wasn't a very good worker. He spent lots of time cruising the internet. Back in the day, he would spend his time cruising usenet fora with names like rec.sports.fishing, and rec.cryptids.cryptoichthyology.
Lately, those communities had found new life on Reddit, and that's what he was devoting time to when he should have been reviewing branch merchandising strategies and conversion rates.
It wasn't entirely surprising then, when the director of marketing analytics stopped by and uttered those four little words:
"You got a minute?"
"Sure."
Even though Smee did all his "extracurricular" browsing with private mode on, all of his tracking history was there thanks to a little tool called Fiddler.
He packed up his desk and found the little note from Grampa. "A farm huh? Now that sounds entirely too much like work," he thought. But it was in Stardew Valley, and there were rumors of a fish up there like the inflated throat of a bullfrog, but with fins. It was called Legend. Many had claimed to hook it, but no one ever caught it. So, he hopped a bus to Stardew Valley with glory on his mind.
The moment he got off the bus, he was accosted by this redhead and an officious little dink in a bowler who were going on about his grandfather blah blah blah, farming blah blah blah, and - of all things - parsnips! Blsh blah blah.
Well, he picked up on the bit about "stick stuff in this box, and it gets sold," and he realized he needed a little more startup capital than he had, so he butchered a bunch of trees, broke a lot of rocks, got tired, stuck the wood and stone in the box and woke up 250g richer.
Then he got a letter from the guy who ran the local bait-and-tackle. Now that guy, he could relate to! Even though most of Smee's fishing knowledge was of the sort vicariously acquired off the internet, he told a good story, and in return, Willy favored him with some of the local fishing lore and a cast off bamboo rod.
Fishing went slowly at first, but Smee never got the training rod. He must have had a talent, because he caught most of what he hooked, and graduated from that Huck Finn special to a fiberglass rod pretty fast. He was getting deft enough that the fish were coming in with less of a fight and in better condition.
Along the way, that officious little Lewis fellow dragged him into this decrepit old relic of a building, community blah blah blah, and the wizard summoned him, doped him up, rambled about a prophecy, and then confessed that he might be responsible for a child of uncertain lineage. Smee fled that encounter and got back to fishing.
He did other things too, when he had to. He chopped enough wood to get a bridge to a better fishing spot. He commissioned a kitchen for the farm and planted 16 potatoes when Willy told him about Dish O'the Sea. He went into the mines to kill insects for bait and get copper for tackle.
He achieved his raison d'etre on 21 Spring 1, at fishing level 9 with Dish O' The Sea for a +3 buff and a trap bobber. He harvested the potatoes (only crop he'd grown) and prepped the dish o'the sea the very morning of the catch. Getting copper for the trap bobber (built, not bought!) was eased considerably by having previously gotten Neptune's Glaive from a fishing chest.
Having gotten Legend, he booked out of town, but not before transferring the deed to the farm to that Morris fellow at the local JojaMart.
He hopped a freight to Zuzu city and parlayed his success into a job hosting a fishing show on a sportsman's network called FIBS.