Custom Fishing Trip Plans
For water you have never fished.
A custom fishing trip plan is written by a person, for your trip.
It names real spots you can legally fish on your dates. It says which of your days looks best and what hours to be on the water. It lays out that state's rules, with a link to the agency for every one. And it tells you how to fish it with the gear in your truck, or what to pick up if you're flying in with none.
Every gate time, fee, rule and report says where it came from and the day somebody read it. Every number comes from public agency data, worked out fresh each time you open the page. One flat price. Seven days' notice, minimum. US waters only.
It's a guide, not a guarantee. Nobody can promise you a fish, and we don't try.
Ordering is not switched on yet. Send us your dates and where you are headed and we will tell you the day it opens, before anyone else.
Get in line for oneSeven days' notice, minimum. US waters only. Full refund if we turn your trip down or cannot find legal water that fits your limits.
What you get
- Real spots, and how to get on them. Where to park, how far the walk is, when the gate opens, what it costs, and who says so.
- Which day, and which hours. Your days ranked against each other, and the best stretch inside the hours you can actually fish. Not the best hours of the day. The best hours of your day.
- The rules that apply to you. Size and bag limits, the license a visitor needs and what it runs, closures, and the special-area rules that catch people out. Every one quoted from the state agency, with the day we read it.
- How to fish it. Written for the gear you told us you're bringing and the way you fish it, off the bank, wading, out of a kayak or a boat.
- What to pick up, if you're flying in with nothing. Plenty of folks fish a trip on a cheap combo bought on the way, or on a rented rod. A plan built around gear you don't own is no use to anybody. Say so on the order form and we'll tell you what this water needs, in plain terms instead of brand names, and which shop nearby has it. Who rents, too. The price is between you and the shop.
- What we don't know. Where nobody posts the gate hours. Where the closest gauge sits on a different river. How old the newest report is. A plan that never admits any of that wasn't written by somebody who looked.
- A page, not a PDF. It works the conditions out again every time you open it, so it sharpens up as your dates get closer instead of going stale in your downloads folder.
It arrives as one page built from these ten parts: The call, Your days, hour by hour, The outlook, Where to fish, How to fish it, What should make you change, What people have been reporting, What is measured, what is not, Regulations and license, The brief it was built from. You can read the whole thing on your phone at the ramp.
Who this is for, and who it is not for
This is for fishing water you don't know. A work trip with a rod in the truck. Visiting family over the holidays. Your first time in a new state. A lake you've driven past for years and never put a boat on.
What you're missing is the local stuff, and it's the slowest thing to work out from eight hundred miles away. Where you're allowed to stand. Which bank holds fish this time of year. What the rules are here, and which ones changed. Which of your two or three days is the one to take.
If you know your water like the back of your hand and can fish it in the dark, you don't need this. It'll tell you less than you already know. We'd rather say that here than after you've paid. The order form asks up front whether you've fished the area, and if you say you know it well, you get this same warning before you ever reach the payment page.
How a trip plan is made, and how it is checked
Every fact in a plan carries a source and the day a person read it. Six checks run before it goes out, and any one of them can stop it:
opens every page the plan cites and kills the plan if the sentence we quoted is not on it. A link that loads proves nothing. The sentence has to be there.
makes sure every rule and every access note points at the agency that publishes it, with the day a person read it sitting right next to the claim.
drives every spot from the address you gave us, so a drive time on your page was measured and not guessed. It flags anything past the limit you set.
checks which gauge and which tide station the engine picked for each spot, how far off it sits, and whether that is really your water. A gauge on the next river over gets labeled as one.
flags any report, rule or access note that has gotten old enough to need reading again before the plan goes out the door.
reads every sentence looking for language that promises a fish, and kills it. The plan gets to tell you where and when. It does not get to tell you that you will catch.
One claim, worked through
Say your plan tells you a state park lot opens at seven and charges a day-use fee. Nobody wrote that from memory. It is quoted off the park's own page, the quote gets stored with the plan, and the day somebody read it is printed right there. Before the plan goes out, a check opens that page again and makes sure the sentence is still on it. The lot itself gets driven from the address you gave us, so that drive time is measured. And if the park stops posting its hours, your plan says the hours are unposted. It does not guess.
Where the numbers come from
We do not make up conditions. Grades, best hours, water temp, flow and tide all come out of the same engine behind the free forecast, fed by NOAA, USGS and Open-Meteo. Every figure on your page names the station it came from and how far off that station sits. What goes into a grade is published at how we score, so you can follow any grade back to the arithmetic.
About the tooling
We use software to research and draft, AI tools included, the same way a guide uses a computer. What makes a plan worth trusting is not how the first draft got typed. It is that every claim gets checked against its source by a machine, then read by a person before it reaches you. And that we spell out how, right here, instead of asking you to take our word for it.
Lead time, and trips that are months away
We need seven days before the first morning you plan to fish. The research is what eats the time. Agencies are slow to answer, access has to be confirmed with whoever runs the place instead of remembered, and a plan thrown together in a hurry is the kind that sends somebody to a locked gate.
A trip months out is welcome, and it is how most orders come in. Access, rules and which water suits the way you fish do not depend on next month's weather, so we write it now. Tide and daylight are exact no matter how far out you are. The weather fills itself in on your page as the dates get close. And a far-out plan gets a second pass nearer the trip, when we read the reports and the rules again.
Price
$79 when ordering opens, which is soon. The plans are written and checked. The part that takes your money is not switched on yet. Write to plans@bestdaystofish.com with your dates and we will tell you when it is.
Measure it against a guide, not against an app. A guided half day runs several hundred dollars in most states. A plan is a fraction of that, and it buys the half a guide does before you ever show up: the where, the when, and what is legal. You bring the boat, the gear and the casting.
What happens after you order
- You get a confirmation with your brief in it, word for word as the person writing your plan will read it. Anything wrong, hit reply and we fix it before we start.
- We might come back with a few questions. The best plans usually come out of those.
- We research it, write it, run the six checks, and a person reads the whole thing on a phone and on a desktop before it goes anywhere.
- You get a link. The page is yours and your buddies' for that trip, and it works the conditions out again every time you open it.
- Booked months out? We go back over it closer to the date and tell you when the weather has shown up on your page.
- After the trip we ask how you did. You do not have to answer. It is how the forecast gets better at the one thing it is for.
A guide, not a guarantee
What a plan promises is narrow, and we keep it. Every gate time, fee, rule, closure and report points at the page it came from and the day somebody read it. Every condition number is worked out when you open the page, from sources named right beside it. Anything that is neither of those is marked as our opinion.
What it does not promise is a fish. Agencies change rules between seasons and do not always announce it, gates get locked for reasons nobody publishes, rivers come up overnight, and a well-read day on well-read water still blanks often enough that anybody telling you otherwise is selling something. Check the regulations and the access yourself before you drive, treat the hazard notes as the serious part, and take the rest as a sourced opinion about where to start.
The forecast stays free
Nothing that works today moves behind this. The forecast, the species guides, the almanac and the weekly outlook are free, need no account, and stay that way. A trip plan is hours of a person's research for one trip, which is the only thing here worth charging for. Read about the site for why it is built this way.
Questions
It is for fishing water you do not know. Traveling, visiting family, a new state, a lake you have driven past for years and never put a boat on. What a stranger is missing is the local stuff, and that is the slowest thing to work out from a long way off: where you can legally stand, which bank holds fish this time of year, what the rules are here, and which of your days is the one to take. If you know your water like the back of your hand and can fish it in the dark, this will tell you less than you already know. We would rather say that here than after you have paid.
We use software to research and draft, AI tools included, the same way a guide uses a computer. What makes a plan worth trusting is not how the first draft got typed. It is that every statement about a gate, a rule, a fee or a report names the page it came from and the day a person read it. A machine then opens that page again and kills the plan if the sentence is not there. Every condition number comes out of public agency data through a scoring model whose weights are published on this site. And a person reads the whole thing before you see it. Click any link on a finished plan. That is the whole argument, and it takes about a minute to check.
One flat price for the trip, shown on this page and charged once through Stripe. No subscription, nothing that renews. It covers up to three days of dates and the second pass we make as your trip gets close. Measure it against a guide, not against an app. A guided half day runs several hundred dollars in most states. This is a fraction of that, and it buys the half a guide does before you ever show up.
We deliver inside five days of your order, and at least two days before you fish, whichever comes first. That is in the terms, not just something we hope to hit. Most of the work is research: reading the state agency, confirming access with whoever runs the place, hunting down a report recent enough to mean anything, and checking that every spot actually drives from where you are starting.
That is welcome, and it is how most orders come in. We write the plan now, because access, rules and which water suits the way you fish do not depend on next month’s weather. Tide and daylight are exact no matter how far out you are, so those show up right away. The weather fills itself in on your page as the dates get close, and your page works it out again every time you open it. A trip booked months out also gets a second pass nearer the date, when we read the reports and the rules again.
Seven days before the first morning you plan to fish. The order form will not take a closer date. It is the research that needs the time, not the typing. Agencies are slow to answer, access has to be confirmed with the people who run the place instead of remembered, and a plan thrown together in a hurry is the kind that sends somebody to a locked gate.
Yes, in full, if we turn your order down, if we miss the delivery deadline, or if we cannot find legal public water that fits the limits you gave us. That last one happens, and we would rather hand your money back than pad a plan with water you are not allowed to fish. 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 it: your page works the conditions out again every time you open it, so when the forecast turns it tells you, including which of your days now looks better.
Your page tells you, because it is not a document sitting in your downloads folder. It re-scores your days every time you open it. A front that blows in after the plan was written shows up as a changed grade and a changed best window, and your days stay ranked against each other so you can see which one to take. What it will not do is promise you a fish. A well-read day on well-read water still blanks often enough that anybody telling you different is selling something.
We fix it, fast and for free. That covers a rule we read wrong, a bad access note, or a drive time that does not hold up. Adding to the plan after delivery, another river or another day, is a new order at the price then shown. Before we start writing we might email you a few questions, and you can correct your brief right up until then.
No. The forecast engine runs on US waters only, because the weather, tide, river and water-quality data behind it comes from US agencies, and the rules research depends on state agencies publishing in a form a person can read and quote. We say it here so nobody fills out an order form to find out.
Tell us anyway on the order form. The engine carries behavior profiles for a set list of species. If yours is not on it, we will either name the closest one as a stand-in and say so plainly on your page, or turn the order down and refund it before we write a word. What we will not do is score a fish the engine does not model as though it did.
Yes, and it is normal, not awkward. Plenty of folks fish a trip on a cheap combo bought on the way or on a rented rod, and a plan built around gear you do not own is no use to anybody. The order form asks what you are bringing, and one of the answers is nothing. Say that, and your plan gets a section on what this water needs, in plain terms instead of brand names, so you can walk into any shop and ask for it. It also names shops near your spots, and who rents, because rod rental is easier to find than people expect and sometimes comes with the boat. What we check is that those places exist and do what we say they do, on a date we print. The price is between you and the shop, since those move week to week and you can see them as well as we can.
Write to us from the address you ordered with and we will send it again. Your plan sits at a private address that is not indexed and not linked from anywhere on this site, so the link is how you get to it. It is not password protected, which means anybody you forward it to can read it too.
Ask first, if you would rather
If you are not sure a plan would help for your trip, write to plans@bestdaystofish.com and say where and when. The answer is sometimes that it would not, and that is a better outcome for both of us than a refund. The terms set out delivery, refunds and what we do if we get something wrong.