How the fishing score works
Every lake in the app carries a score from 1 to 100 for each of the next seven days. It is not a guess about whether the fish are biting. It is a reading of the weather on that lake's own coordinate, weighted by what matters most to an angler in a boat or on a float tube. Here is the whole recipe, with nothing held back.
Wind first, on this water
Wind decides more days than anything else, so it carries the largest share of the score, up to 28 points. The app does not score the forecast wind as printed. It blends in half the gust spread, because a day that reads 15 km/h with gusts to 40 is not a 15 km/h day, and then scales the result by how much open water the lake gives the wind. A small sheltered lake takes a breeze that would blow a boat off a big open one. That is why the same forecast can score differently on two lakes ten minutes apart.
Gusts are scored a second time on their own, and only subtract, up to 20 points. The blend already charges for an ordinary gusty day. What this catches is the squally day that arrives in punches, the kind nobody wants to be anchored in.
Rain, and the chance of it
Precipitation is the other deciding factor, also up to 28 points. The score reads both the expected amount and the probability, so a day with a small chance of a shower keeps most of its points and a day of steady rain loses them. Light rain on a warm day is not treated as a disaster, because it often is not one.
Air temperature
Up to 18 points, from the average of the day's high and low. The score favours the mild middle where a trout's metabolism and an angler's comfort overlap, and marks down both the cold snaps and the heat that pushes fish deep.
The barometer's direction, not its number
Up to 13 points. The app compares today's mean pressure with yesterday's and scores the trend: steady or gently rising pressure scores well, a sharp fall scores poorly. The absolute reading matters less than which way it is heading, which is the way most experienced stillwater anglers read it too.
Cloud, and the moon
Cloud cover is worth up to 8 points, with an overcast day scoring above a bluebird one. The moon adds up to 5 on a peak solunar day, 2 on a major feeding day and nothing otherwise. Both are small on purpose. They break ties. They do not make a day.
What the score refuses to do
- When a freezing day is in the week, the lake's headline score is held back and shown as cold, and its map pin drops off the colour scale, because a lake that may have capped should not look lively. The day-by-day numbers stay on the sheet.
- It never appears on a map pin. The only number on the map is a count of lakes. Scores live on the lake's own sheet, next to the forecast they came from.
- It never tells you the ice will hold you. The winter model says whether a lake has likely frozen and stops there.
- It never publishes a lake's score on a public page or a social post. Those say what the weather is doing. The reading is yours, in the app.
Where the weather comes from
The forecast is pulled for each lake's own coordinate, not for the nearest town, and it is refreshed through the day. The seven days on a lake's public page are the same seven days the app scores. Open the lake in the app and you see the score, the wind and weather charts, the barometer trend and the solunar periods together.
Open the map: 1,651 BC lakes, each with a 7-day forecast and a score