FISHING TECH: Catchbook Fishing App for iPhone

Photo courtesy of Field and Stream Magazine

I’ve never been one to load up my iPhone with apps that will never get used but Field and Streams’s Catchbook, a social fishing journal, caught my eye and I’m going to give it a try when I hit the lake this weekend with my rod and reel.  This app is really intriguing for a couple of reasons :

Photo posting: This app allows you to post photo’s of your big catch (we’ve all heard the fishing stories about he monster that got away) and provide a detail journal entry about time, location, date, and weather conditions of each fish  you catch

Find friends:  Invite your friends to use Catchbook and keep tabs on what their catching and how their doing. It’s also a good way to show off your latest catch and one up all your fishing buddies!

Pattern your spots: Every time you post a photo to Catchbook that photo gets pinned to a spot on your map. You can filter the maps to show specific species of fish caught at different times of the year, different times of the day, specific weather conditions, water temperatures, and much more. You can then use the “Best Baits” feature to learn which bait or lure is catching fish under your specific conditions.  For an avid angler, this could be really useful!

Catches in real time: Keep an eye on what other people are catching by checking the Catches tab. You can search specific catches by fish species or specific locations, that way you can find the honey holes on a new lake!

I’ve got family down in south Texas that eats sleeps and breaths fishing, they do a lot of tournament bass fishing and two of them even work for the Texas Wildlife and Parks Department managing largemouth bass populations and this app could be a really cool way to keep up on what their catching and let them know how I’m doing up here in Kansas.

I’m looking forward trying this app out this weekend. Speaking of, anybody want to go toss out a line?