Terms of Service | Best Days to Fish

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing and using Best Days to Fish ("the Service"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not use the Service.

2. Description of Service

Best Days to Fish provides fishing forecasts and solunar predictions based on astronomical calculations, weather data, and environmental factors. The Service includes:

Solunar feeding period predictions based on moon position
Weather forecasts from third-party data providers
Barometric pressure analysis
Tide predictions for coastal locations (via NOAA)
Water temperature, measured where a gauge, buoy or shore station reports it and modeled where none does
Overall fishing condition grades (A+ through F)

All of the above is free and needs no account. The Service also offers one paid item: a custom trip plan, written by a person for one angler's one trip, covering where the public access is, which hours the model favors, what the regulations say, and how to fish it. Each plan is delivered as a private page on this site whose conditions recompute from the same live data as the free forecast. Section 12 governs those orders.

3. Disclaimer of Warranties

The Service is provided "as is" without warranties of any kind.

Fishing forecasts are predictions based on historical patterns and scientific theory. We do not guarantee:

That you will catch fish on days rated highly by our system
The accuracy of weather forecasts (provided by third-party services)
The accuracy of tide predictions (provided by NOAA)
That solunar feeding periods will result in fish activity
Continuous, uninterrupted access to the Service
That you will catch fish, on a custom trip plan or anywhere else
That every gate, fee, closure, regulation, or access route described in a custom trip plan is still as described on the day you fish it
That a fishing report cited in a plan is current, or that the fish it describes are still there

Weather conditions, local fish populations, water conditions, fishing pressure, and many other factors affect fishing success. Our forecasts should be used as one tool among many when planning your fishing trips.

A custom trip plan is a guide, not a guarantee. What it promises is the work: every regulation and access claim checked against the authority that publishes it, with the date a person read it printed beside it, and every condition figure computed from public data rather than asserted. What it cannot promise is the fish, or that an agency has not changed a rule since. Rules change in season, gates close without notice, and emergency orders are published on no schedule. Confirm the current regulations and access before you fish, every time. You are responsible for your own license, for the rules on the water you fish, and for your own safety.

4. Limitation of Liability

Best Days to Fish and its operators shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages resulting from your use of or inability to use the Service. This includes but is not limited to damages for loss of profits, goodwill, data, or other intangible losses, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

For a paid custom trip plan, our total liability to you is limited to the price you paid for that plan.

5. Third-Party Data Sources

The Service relies on data from third-party providers:

Open-Meteo: Weather forecasts, recent weather history and barometric pressure data
NOAA Tides and Currents: Tide predictions for coastal areas, and water temperature from the shore thermometers at tide stations
NOAA NDBC: Water temperature from ocean and Great Lakes buoys
NOAA CoastWatch: Satellite sea-surface temperature
NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory: Daily satellite analysis of Great Lakes surface temperature
USGS Water Services: Water temperature, river flow, dissolved oxygen and turbidity from monitoring stations
USGS lake temperature model: Each lake's seasonal water-temperature pattern, used where no station reports
USGS National Map (NHD): Which lake or river a location is on
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Release flows below Corps dams
Zippopotam.us: ZIP code to location conversion
Photon: Place search
BigDataCloud: Coordinates to city and state names

We are not responsible for the accuracy, availability, or reliability of third-party data. These services may have their own terms of service and privacy policies.

6. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

Use automated systems to excessively access the Service
Attempt to interfere with or disrupt the Service
Scrape or harvest data for commercial purposes without permission
Use the Service for any illegal purpose
Misrepresent your location to circumvent geographic restrictions

7. Intellectual Property

The solunar calculation algorithms, scoring methodology, user interface design, and content of Best Days to Fish are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may not copy, modify, distribute, or create derivative works without our express written permission.

A plan you paid for is yours to use. Buying a custom trip plan licenses it to you and to the people fishing with you, for that trip: print it, read it in the truck, send the link to the friend in the passenger seat. What it does not license is resale, publication, or using it to build a competing product.

8. Geographic Limitations

The Service currently supports locations within the United States only. Weather forecasts, tide data, and ZIP code lookups are limited to U.S. locations. We do not guarantee accuracy for locations outside the continental United States.

9. Modifications to Service

We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service at any time without notice. We may also update these Terms of Service periodically. Continued use of the Service after changes constitutes acceptance of the modified terms.

10. Governing Law

These Terms of Service shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the United States. Any disputes arising from these terms or your use of the Service shall be resolved in the appropriate courts.

11. Contact

Questions about these Terms of Service, or about a custom trip plan order, go to our contact form. The site itself is at bestdaystofish.com.

12. Custom Trip Plans

This section applies if you order a custom trip plan. Section 3 still applies: it is a guide, not a guarantee.

Ordering and delivery

There are two plans: one day of fishing, or up to three days on one trip. The price shown for the plan you choose at the time you order is what you are charged, once, through Stripe. There is no subscription and nothing recurs. A trip longer than three days is priced by email before you pay
A plan covers one trip base or area, with the dates, fishing methods, travel limits, and other constraints agreed from your brief before research starts. Extra destinations or a substantial change require a separate quote before work begins
You start with basic trip information and purchase on Stripe. Within 24 hours we review suitability, then manually send the full questionnaire, ask for clarification, or decline and refund. Initial answers remain editable in a personalized questionnaire
We need at least seven days' notice before the first day you intend to fish. If you pay for a trip that starts sooner, we refund it in full. If the completed questionnaire arrives inside seven days, we review feasibility and confirm a deadline or discuss a refund before research
We deliver within five days of receiving your completed questionnaire, and at least two days before your trip, whichever comes first. Delivery is a link, emailed to the address you ordered with
Trips well beyond the forecast horizon are welcome. The plan is written now, and the conditions fill in on the page as your dates come into range. A plan ordered far out also gets a human review nearer the trip: reports, regulations, and relevant access information are re-read, the page is updated as needed, and we email what changed or confirm the plan still holds. Automatic forecast updates do not replace this review
Plans are written for United States locations only, and sold to adults. By paying, you confirm you are 18 or older and accept these terms

Refunds

You get a full refund if we decline your order, if we miss the delivery deadline above, or if we cannot find legal public access that fits the limits you gave us. The last one is a real outcome and we would rather refund it than pad a plan with water you cannot legally reach.

Once the plan is delivered, the work is done and the sale is final. Weather is never a refund reason, and that is not us dodging: your plan page re-scores your days from live data about once an hour, so when the forecast turns it tells you, including which of your days now looks better. A plan that said the wrong thing about a rule or an access point is a different matter, and it is covered below.

We may decline any order and refund it in full. The usual reasons are that your dates and limits do not contain legally accessible water, that the water or the fish is outside what the model covers, or that we cannot do the research to our own standard in the time available.

Changes and corrections

We may email you one round of questions before writing, and you can correct your brief up until we start
If we got something wrong, we fix it, promptly and at no charge. That includes a misread regulation, a bad access note, or a drive time that does not hold up
Adding to the plan after delivery, such as another river or another day, is a new order at the price then shown

Your plan page, and what you tell us after

Your plan lives at a private, unlisted address. It is not indexed by search engines and it is not linked from anywhere on this site, but it is not password protected: anyone you send the link to can read it, and so can anyone they send it to. Treat it like a document, not a vault.

After the trip we may ask what happened. Answering is optional, and what you tell us is used to improve the forecast by comparing it against what the model predicted. We publish a plan as a public sample only if you say yes when your brief asks, and a published sample has your name and email removed and the brief reduced to a city and a species. Nothing you report after a trip is published with your name.