Live fishing conditions
Wind, waves, water temperature, tide and active weather warnings for a US fishing spot — read from NOAA buoys and the National Weather Service, with the station and distance behind every number.
Where are you fishing?
Every source behind this tool is a US federal agency — NOAA, the National Weather Service and the National Data Buoy Center — so it can only answer for US waters.
Where these numbers come from
Four federal sources, none of which we pay for or hold a key to, so what you see here is what the agency published:
- Wind, waves, water temperature, pressure — the NOAA National Data Buoy Center.
- Tide predictions — NOAA Tides & Currents.
- Forecast and warnings — the National Weather Service.
- River temperature and flow — USGS, on our water temperature tool.
The three rules this tool follows
Nothing stale is shown. A buoy reading older than 3 hours is discarded rather than displayed with a caveat. Buoys go offline, ice over and drift, and a reading from last week presented as “current” is worse than no reading at all.
Every number names its station and distance. Measurements come from different buoys — at Montauk the water temperature and the wave height genuinely come from stations thirty miles apart. Rather than pick one station and imply it measured everything, each figure carries the station that produced it, how far away it is, and how old it is. Anything beyond 25 miles is flagged so you can discount it.
No tides inland. If the nearest tide station is more than 25 miles away, or the nearest buoy more than 60, that block is left out entirely. A tide table for a freshwater lake is not a rounding error, it is nonsense — and it would undermine everything printed next to it.
What we deliberately do not tell you
There is no bite score, solunar rating or “best time to fish” index here. Those numbers are easy to generate and we have not found evidence that would let us stand behind one. What is on this page is measurement, plus the one interpretation that is genuinely well established: fish respond to water temperature, which is why the spawning calendar works off degrees rather than dates.
Barometric pressure and its trend are shown because they are measured, and because many anglers watch them. We are not attaching a claim about what a falling glass does to feeding, because we have not found agency or peer-reviewed evidence solid enough to publish one.
Before you rely on this
This page is a convenience, not a marine forecast. For any decision about whether it is safe to go out, use the National Weather Service directly, and read the full text of any active warning. Conditions at a buoy offshore can differ sharply from conditions at the beach, jetty or inlet you are standing on.
Rip currents form at the jetties and piers anglers fish from, and persist even in small surf — see how to read water for fishing.