Fishbrain - Fishing App

This app is very helpful, map is great, and weather information is spot on. BUT…..ever since the next to last update, the ability to see walleye, crappie, or any other fish not preloaded in the “BiteTime” tab under forecast has gone away, not to mention that on my lake, brown trout and rainbow trout are mistakenly shown. There aren’t any of these species in our lake and when I asked support why/how I could remove them and see other species they said the algorithm is the reason they’re there and nothing can be done. BiteTime on my lake: Largemouth Bass Smallmouth Bass Spotted Bass Rock Bass Channel Catfish Bluegill - they always bite. irrelevant Green Sunfish - irrelevant Brown Trout - not in lake Rainbow Trout - not in lake Missing: Hybrid Bass - another highly sought after fish. No information. Striper - extremely sought after and fished for on a daily basis. Nothing in BiteTime. Crappie (Black/White) - same as above. Nothing on app. Ever since the previous update I feel I’m not getting the value I was but still paying the same price. Customer service was dismissive and not helpful. Not happy. I still use this app for the weather and Bass information but actively searching for another app until FishBrain decides to fix their “algorithm.” Also, other apps have reached out to local fisherman who use their app and encouraged participation and post accuracy by offering the app free or at a reduced price. I would suggest FishBrain follow this example. App used to be better though it is still useable.

This app has so far been fantastic, with only one glaring problem. It’s not the apps fault for this but it doesn’t have every body of water named as a location to submit a fish caught. What is a problem is that the app does not allow you to create a new body of water. I understand the developers being hesitant to add this feature due to the possibility of it being exploited and used to create inappropriate lake names or misleading people, so maybe they could have a rank system, where depending on how much you contribute to the app you rank up from say, Shad of Bluegill all the way to Northern Pile or Muskie, and then from Muskie travel on to saltwater fish, or have multiple levels within a rank, Bluegill 1,2,3 etc. The idea is once you hit a certain rank (not too high but not too low) you gain the ability to add custom lakes. The lakes have to be properly marked and punctuated and the community could help decide to keep it or not through an upvote or downvote system. The lake would get added in temporarily for a month and during that month anglers would upvote or downvote the lake and at the end of the month if there were more upvotes than downvotes, the lake stays. If there were more downvotes, the lake gets removed. Finally, there would have to be a lake report system where if a lake that didn’t fit somehow got past the community upvote downvote system is could get reported and the name gets changed or the lake gets removed permanently. That’s my idea on how to solve this issue. On the off chance that the devs are reading this I just want to say: Keep up the great work on the app and I hope you implement something like this soon!

Unfortunately their catch data is near worthless given the fact you’re forced to pick from a few predetermined fishing locations. How these locations are picked, I have no idea, some spots make sense, some don’t. Others appear to be user submitted (spelling and capitalization errors) but there’s no where in the app to do so. When you log a catch it forces you to select one of a few nearby fishing “spots” which often are nowhere near you, you can leave it blank but by default it’ll just pick the closest one for you. This may not seem like a huge issue but it ends up completely screwing any catch data or fish forecasts. I mean the top fish for almost every salt water spot around here is large mouth bass, and you’ve got fish caught 5-10 miles away from where they’re marked. If fish brain just added the ability to create a new fishing “spot” this issue could be almost completely avoided. You can just let the community moderate it too. Believe me no one like incorrect data. Update: !!!!Awesome feedback