Best fishing forecast apps, and the other half of a good day's fishing

Fishing forecast apps predict the fish. Perfect Day predicts the day you will be glad you went. Both matter, and they are not the same thing; here is what the well-known apps do, as one careful roundup describes them, and where the two fit.

Updated 16 September 2026.

What the fishing apps do

We have not tested these ourselves for this article, so we describe them as MakeUseOf's roundup of fishing forecast apps describes them (read 16 September 2026); where it states a price, we repeat it as stated there, and it may have changed.

• Fishing Points: in the roundup's words, There are five separate forecast tabs you can look at when planning your next outing: Fish activity, Waves, Tides, Weather, and Solunar. It notes that forecasts beyond the next day need the premium subscription.
• Fishing Forecast: The app has a section that lets you see around what time each day (for the next five days, at least) specific fish species should be biting. The roundup describes it as free.
• When to Fish: On the home screen of When to Fish, you'll see an overview of what the day looks like and whether it's a good day to go fishing. The roundup gives its premium price as $2.99 for six months.

The common thread is the fish: solunar tables, tides, species activity, bite times. That is knowledge Perfect Day does not have and does not pretend to.

The other half of a good day's fishing

Anyone who has taken a child fishing knows the fish are the smaller half. The day is the larger: whether it was warm enough to sit for three hours, whether the wind put a chop on the water and a whine in the eight-year-old, whether the rain arrived at ten. A fishing app will tell you the bite is on at dawn Saturday. It will not tell you that dawn Saturday is 41° with a 15 mph wind and that the person you are bringing will last twenty minutes.

That is Perfect Day's half. Describe the day once — 55° to 85°, wind under 8 mph, rain under 15%, dew point under 65° so the afternoon is not sticky, four hours in a row between 6 and 11, or 3 and 8 — and it watches the next sixteen days every three hours across five weather models, then sends one message when a morning or an evening in the next ten qualifies. $5 a year after a free month; the same account also watches the course, the beach and the garden.

Side by side

Third-party descriptions and prices are as the linked roundup stated them on 16 September 2026, not from the apps' own pages, and may have changed; we recheck quarterly. Perfect Day makes this page.

Who you'll bring

The first cast. The grandfather who taught you, on the one still evening in September when the lake was glass. The friend who does not fish but will sit on the bank with a flask on the right day. The fishing app finds the fish. Perfect Day finds the day, and tells you once, days ahead, so that you can find the person. For families · For couples · How far ahead you can trust the forecast.