The Digital Revolution - Take Me Fishing

For a traditionalist like me, giving up my maps, charts, and visits to a tackle or coffee shop is not going to happen.

For a traditionalist like me, giving up my maps, charts, and visits to a tackle or coffee shop is not going to happen. I prefer to sit on a bench, drink a coffee, and listen to an angler talk about nailing a big fish. I enjoy the chats about “the one that got away” too, but I must admit I’m a sucker for a happy ending.

Still, I find parts of the digital revolution really helpful, and there are a number of sites that I check periodically. I’m not the kind of guy to swap a story for a video, but here are a few digital resources that help me along the way. And as a partial dinosaur I’d be grateful for your recommendations, too.

Take Me Fishing, www.takemefishing.org, is a great resource for licenses, boat registrations, boat ramps, blogs (thanks for reading mine!), and general technique and species information. There are how-to videos and places to go that are perfect for family fishing trips or covering fish facts for your kids.
Weather Underground, www.wunderground.com, is one of my go-to weather resources. It has a tremendous amount of data distributed in one dashboard. From daily, hourly, and weekly reports to sunrise/set times to lunar phases and historical trends, it’s a one-stop shop. A wide variety of reporting sites make it easy if you’re on the move, and if you’re a creature-of-habit you can customize your coordinates, too.
Saltwater Tides, www.saltwatertides.com, offers 2,500 locations where coastal anglers can get tide predictions. Coastal states from Maine through WashingtonState are represented, and there are a number of specific areas covered in each region, too. You can pick between an individual through 14 day time period, and get tides up to a year in advance (helpful for planning family fishing vacations). You’ll get High and Low Tide predictions twice a day, the average tide’s height, sunrise/set, and lunar phases.
FishBrain, www.fishbrain.com, is a digital way to improve and share your fishing. It’s an app that allows you to show what you want from pictures of your catches to tackle used to weather conditions. You can also follow anglers in the areas you fish to see how they’re doing, and to study the building databases to help you figure out what to do more of (and what to do less of). Learn about wind direction, air pressure, water temperatures among other things to put more fish in the boat. Urban fishing and back country fishing are featured equally.

What are your favorite digital resources for fishing and boating?

Tom Keer

Tom Keer is an award-winning writer who lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He is a columnist for the Upland Almanac, a Contributing Writer for Covey Rise magazine, a Contributing Editor for both Fly Rod and Reel and Fly Fish America, and a blogger for the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation’s Take Me Fishing program. Keer writes regularly for over a dozen outdoor magazines on topics related to fishing, hunting, boating, and other outdoor pursuits. When they are not fishing, Keer and his family hunt upland birds over their three English setters. His first book, a Fly Fishers Guide to the New England Coast was released in January 2011. Visit him at www.tomkeer.com or at www.thekeergroup.com.