Fishing forecast by the hour
An online tool for the fishing forecast: from the weather, the barometer, the water temperature and the sun and moon it rates every hour of the coming week separately for bass, walleye, pike, crappie, catfish and other fish. Next to each rating you can see what it is made of, and a catch log shows whether the forecast matches your own trips.
How to use it
A town nearby or your location.
Up to three species at once.
The best windows and why they are best.
Find out when your fish are most likely to bite this week
Choose a place — the tool takes the weekly weather forecast and the weather of the past weeks to estimate the water.
Best times
Bite by the hour
Tap an hour to see what the rating is made oftwilightnight● moon overhead or underfoot○ moonrise or moonset
Past the third day the forecast comes in 6-hour steps — the hours between them are smoothed.
Conditions now
Catch log
How the rating is built
The rating is the product of seven factors for every hour and every fish, scaled to 0–100:
- Water — how close the estimated water temperature is to the band where the species feeds hardest; under ice — the share of activity the species keeps in winter.
- Season — spawning phase from the water's history: before spawning +25%, during spawning −55%, after recovery +20%; fall feeding of predators +15%.
- Light — sun height and cloud against the species' habits: walleye and catfish favor dusk, bluegill and perch the day.
- Pressure — change over a day and three days: a slow fall before a front helps, a sharp rise after one hurts; the effect is capped at 25%.
- Wind and rain — a ripple helps; flat calm, a gale, heavy rain and thunder hurt.
- Moon — solunar windows (moon overhead and underfoot up to +12%, moonrise and moonset up to +6%) and new or full moon (+3%).
The rating does not promise a catch. To measure whether it predicts anything, the catch log sends us the species, the number of fish and that hour's rating anonymously — without the place.
Spawning and feeding temperatures come from reference works: Kottelat and Freyhof (2007), Coutant (1977), Wismer and Christie (1987), state fisheries agencies and FAO.
The rating describes fishing conditions from the weather, the water and the light; it does not promise a catch. On a given lake depth, food, current and fishing pressure matter too.
Weather forecast — MET Norway (CC BY 4.0) and DWD; weather of past weeks — NASA POWER; recent pressure — airport reports from NOAA AWC; the water temperature model was checked on SYKE data (CC BY 4.0).