Ever wish you could retrieve, access and log hardcore fishing info without dialing up a computer or wrestling with a GPS touchscreen? Sure would be handy, especially if you could carry it in your pocket. Even better if it was right there in your hand all the time.
In truth, it's pretty surprising that outdoors folks have been largely overlooked by the smartphone app developers. Think about it. There are apps for music, for video, for newspapers, sports scores. Heck, there are even apps that make your smartphone sound like a lightsaber.
That's all changing, and the good news is there's a high-end app available now for hardcore fishermen. And the best news of all is that it was developed by former pro fisherman Sammy Lee, who's a longtime radio host, industry leader and active force behind the burgeoning Bass Fishing Hall of Fame.
About a year ago, Lee developed the FishMate and FishMate Pro apps for the iPhone, and today announced that both apps are available for Droid phones as well. In the year since FishMate's introduction, anglers in all 50 U.S. states and 42 countries around the world use FishMate.
The beauty of the app is that is allows you instant access to critical fishing information like weather, moon phase, peak feeding times, barometric-pressure charts and more. At the same time, it allows you to input important catches. The catch note captures current conditions and GPS coordinates on Google Maps for a continuing fishing log, stores photos, and interfaces with FaceBook and Twitter (although your GPS coordinates won't be made public, just the photos if you wish!).
"I can't tell you how pleased I am as an angler to have a product that so many people all over the world are having success with," Lee told BassFan. "Most of this goes back to my tournament background. I grew up in Alabama on Smith Lake, and as a child, I'd routinely cut out the weekly major and minor fishing times from the Sunday newspaper and put them in my tacklebox. I'd buy a little booklet of moonphases and keep it in there too. I can still go back and show you my logbooks from when I was 15 or 16 years old with every catch I made and over the years you can see consistent patterns. I spent hours at home at night doing it. With FishMate, all you do is press a button and the data's automatically formatted and stored. You just input whatever other data you want – lure, type of retrieve, line weight. There's a form for that. And when you save it, the weather and current conditions are stored automatically."
Lee also developed a saltwater version called FirstMate, and hunting versions called HuntMate and HuntMate Pro.
The FishMate app costs $9.99 and again is available for iPhone and Droid phones. FishMate Pro costs $19.99. The cost is for a lifetime purchase – no yearly renewals – as well as software upgrades.
To clarify, a purchase of the upgraded FishMate Pro delivers:
> Color weather radar (updated every 15 minutes)
> Barometric-pressure chart (updated every 6 minutes)
> Recorded GPS coordinates and map display for catch input
> Geotracking via Google Maps
"We really worked very, very hard to try to incorporate as many of the data points an angler could possibly need for an advanced fishing log," Lee noted. "When I showed FishMate to Aaron Martens, he downloaded it immediately. It's exactly the tool he'd been looking for, and really, when you look at all the various components that FishMate brings to an angler, it's literally everything a weekend or even pro angler needs."
For more about FishMate, or to download, visit FishMateApp.com.
For questions about the product, email Sammy Lee here.
