One of the most important traits a fisherman must possess to be successful is confidence. Having current, accurate information at your fingertips is by far the best start to a good day on the water. I start every trip with Fish Washington, it is a must have for all who fish the waters of the Evergreen State.
So I’ve recently gotten into fishing and my dad told about this app and it tells you want you able to catch how many sizes and if the places are closed and much more like fishing rules and so on I’ve found this app to be really great.
A little difficult to understand some of the regulations at first, particularly for salmon/steelhead rules, however with time it becomes a great resource. Especially since it syncs for off-line use.
The biggest issue is the ads running on the bottom of the map screen. While WDFW is in need of proper funding, using taxpayers money to develop an app that runs ads is disappointing at best and illegal at worst. One of the most egregious ads was one from the NRA recruiting new members with a “stand and fight” banner. How is that even close to being acceptable on a platform developed using taxes?
Developer Response
Hello,
Thank you for the feedback. I am happy to hear that you are finding the app helpful. Regarding your concern about the NRA ad, you are absolutely correct, no political ads should be shown as we have them disabled (along with several other categories). We have blocked the advertiser and raised a complaint with the ad servicer. We are leveraging ads to offset development and maintenance costs (reducing taxpayer cost), much as we have always done for the paper pamphlet. In a future release, we hope to a) serve ads ourselves, sold to fishing, recreation and related businesses; and b) add an option to opt out of ads with either a low one-time or subscription pricing structure that could perhaps also enable more features. That said, we re-evaluate the costs and benefits of advertising on an ongoing basis. I encourage you to reach out directly to the WDFW Commission, Director's Office, and/or the Fish Program Assistant Director with any legal concerns.
Respectfully,
Jake Shapley
Application Developer, Washington Department of Fish and WildlifeI like the app and it’s concept, it’s super easy to use and quickly check regulations on body’s of water. I do find it hard to know where you are looking sometimes because nothing is named. It would be much better if at least the bigger rivers are named so you know you aren’t looking at a small creek. I often find myself going back and forth between this app and google maps to make sure I am following the right river/creek. The other issue I have with the app is it takes FOREVER for the emergency rules to update and half the time I just get frustrated and close the app. When the emergency rules are trying to update you can’t use the app at all. If it’s going to take forever for them to load it would be nice if you could still at least use the map because sometimes the emergency rules don’t even matter to the bodies of water that I fish. I like the app and the concept but I think it needs further development.
Developer Response
Hi, Thank you for the feedback. It is very constructive and helpful. Regarding the regs taking forever to update, I have pushed a fix for an issue where downloads were failing silently, causing the updates to never complete. We are also looking into reducing the size of the downloads and a timeout that will move the regs updates to the background, so the app can be used while things are updating. We are also looking into adding labels to named streams and rivers in a future release. Respectfully, Jake Shapley, Application Developer, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, mobileappdev@dfw.wa.govLove that app. Super innovative. Really useful tool, but if there was some way to filter things out a bit cleaner it might help. Like say, select a certain species of game fish, and then have the map highlight all of the bodies of water where it is legal to fish for that species. And if the app was able to give notifications that give emergency closure info or special openings... also would be cool. Thanks.
While it’s understandable that the app needs to take a moment/few minutes to update rules and regs whenever it is opened, but the app is currently spinning its update wheel indefinitely. Doesn’t allow you to click on the map, or select a waypoint, it just “updates” for what has now been at least over 30mins for me.
When I try to submit this feedback via the app, it says the app can not connect to the server (and thus the feedback can not be submitted).
Was really hoping the app would be fixed in time for the opening of fishing season.
This is a must have for any Washington fisherman. It’s updated frequently, easy to use and has info on just about any body if water. It’s simplicity makes is very accesible to beginners while it’s depth of information makes it a valuable tool for experts.
After installing, I tried to use location services to pinpoint my place in the map. It crashed the app every time. After 4 or 5 tries (relaunching each time), it finally worked.
When I select a location, I’m seeing only directions. There’s a blue box with the name of the location and repeated directions, and that look like a button (complete with 2 tight arrows) but tapping in it does nothing. Additionally, the filters for the map are very limited.
As I said it gets buggy every once in a while and I have to restart it but all in all it’s a great app. Our regs can get pretty complex and confusing and this makes it so much easier to navigate that. There’s no excuse to not know the regs when it’s this easy to look them up.
It renews every time you open it (unless it’s multiple times in the same day). I love looking around at the different water ways to see what we can and cannot fish. My husband and I go kayaking and fishing as our hobby, it’s good to have the regulations on hand.
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