ICAST, in any year, is a wonderful place to get a strong sense of the “state of the state” for the recreational fishing industry. It is also a place where many firms roll out their newest products. My job, at ICAST, is to walk (and walk, and walk) the floor scouting out these new products. I then prepare an exhaustive analysis so you, the reader, may marvel at the breadth and depth of the industry’s innovate chops without ever leaving the comfort of your device of choice. Well, that was then…..

Yes, I attended the On The Water event. Yes, I worked the New Product Showcase as hard as ever. Yes, I hit all my marks right up to, but not including, commiting to the preparation of the aforementioned List O’ Wonders article. I just could not get behind extolling the virtues of the “and this year they added a .005″ palladium coating to the load bearing….”

There are so many, more talented writers chronicling the panapoly of innovative new products, here and here and here and….. you get it.

Just Some Of The Great New Products On Display At ICAST 2019

So, what the heck am I writing about?

In the middle of not feeling it I wandered over to check out Salvus 360’s new product, Survival Shorts.

A fine and useful product in its own right, (check it out here) scoping out the Salvus offering served further as an intro to a product in the booth next door. One that totally connected with me. Fishing Intelligence! The more you know, the better you fish. That is what the heck I am writing about.

Fishing Intelligence

While checking out survival shorts, I caught a glimpse of the goings on in booth 1402. One of the folk from Fishing Intelligence, LLC was demoing their new fishing log app, Fishint. For all the world, my first reaction was “….heh, looks like a FishBrain knockoff”.

Knockoff? Well, no, not exactly. To be certain, there is competitive overlap with apps from both FishBrain & ANGLR. Both FishBrain and ANGLR are mature offerings with very solid feature sets. Fishint is a new entrant and comports itself well where data input coordination, usability, UX and data privacy features are concerned.

Fishint is first and foremost, not a social app. It is a screaming hot fishing log. There is no possibility for direct sharing of your fishing log to social platforms. You want to do that you,ll need to do so outside of Fishint or employ another app, one intended for the purpose. So, why does this matter?

It matters, mostly by protecting your fishing interests, limiting who does and does not have access to your data now and in the future and doesn’t build another anglers (or a bunch of them) experience off of your hard work. As a kayak angler, I sweat enough to get each and every fish I catch. You go sweat some yourself and we can talk about it in generalities, over a beer.

Additionally, there is no shortage of data abuse examples floating around in the marketplace today. Sure, Fishing Intelligence, LLC has access to your data (price of admission) but, no one else does. I spoke to the Rob Kinnear about data and how Fishing Intelligence, LLC envisions further exploitation of the dataset(s) they will be privy to from the Fishint app. The company has no plans to share any of the anglers private data with any outside sources. He did mention the possibility of annomizing data for future “check this out” uses with app users. It remains to see how that unfolds but, sounded benign to me.

From the Fishint website, the feature set:

  • Provides access to the most accurate weather and water data specific to your fishing location.
  • Allows you to plot every fish you catch or observe.
  • Map filters allow you to select which features matter most for your fishery.
  • Offers 14 elements (tides, winds, pressure, and more) to filter your catch and observation data.
  • “Reel Time” analytics allows you to automatically filter your data to help you make a more intelligent decision about where to fish.
  • Keeps your data private – there’s no sharing of spots or information.
  • Increases its value with every fish you log. The more fish you plot, the more useful the app becomes.

The interface is clean and responsive, the datasets the app captures are exactly what you would want and the ability to fine tune your fishing log in myriad ways is almost awe inspiring. When compared to more established competitors Fishint hold up well and is worth a head to head look.

For now, the app is available for iOS devices with Android access “coming soon”. Give this app a look see. If you already employ the fine apps from ANGLR or FishBrain, you owe it to yourself to see what’s new with Fishint from Fishing Intelligence, LLC

So, in the end ICAST delivered for me again.