Which river, and what hour to be standing in it.
There are apps that show you where the rivers are. RiseCast reads live flows, water temperature, weather, pressure, solunar timing, and hatch data, then tells you which water and which window.
Be standing in it
6:10pto8:05p
Madison River · today
We never sell your spots. Not to anyone, not ever.
Free tier for live conditions. Pro from $4.99 a month after a 14 day trial.
Madison River
Below Ennis Lake, MT
Why
Flow 810 cfs, in range
Water 54F, prime for browns
Falling barometer
Bright midday sun
Best hours, next 48
Best window today: 6:10p to 8:05p. Evening caddis, falling light, water holding 54F.
AI Fly Box
ProElk Hair Caddis #14 to #16
Dead drift the seam, twitch on the swing
Pheasant Tail #16 to #18
Dropper, 18in below the dry
Zebra Midge #20
Deep in the slower inside bend
Illustration with sample data
The whole product
Anyone can tell you where. The hard part is when.
Mapping apps stop at where the rivers are. These are the three questions that actually decide a day, in the order you face them, and RiseCast answers all three.
Which water
Every stream gets a Rise Score from 0 to 100 built from flow, water temperature, weather, season, and hatch activity. Narrow a whole region down to the two or three worth your morning.
Which hours
A 48 hour timeline blends solunar periods, light, temperature swing, and hatch windows. Fish the two good hours instead of grinding through nine bad ones.
Which fly
The AI Fly Box reads the conditions on your water right now, the regional hatch model, and the newest local shop report, then names patterns, sizes, and how to fish them.
The map
Start with what is actually near you.
Water is drawn by class, from gold medal down to marginal, so quality reads at a glance in a drainage you have never fished. Access points are marked by type, public land is shaded, and your own saved spots sit on top where only you can see them.
- Filter by water class and pick what shows on the map, with the rest of the chrome out of the way
- Set a radius from 5 to 200 miles and sort by distance, class, or rating
- The map, access points, and live gauge readings are free. No account needed to look around
Real screens from the beta build, Madison River near Ennis
Offline
The canyon has no bars.
Signal ends about where the good water starts. Download a region before you leave pavement and the map, the access points, the conditions, and the latest shop report ride along on the device. No spinner at the put in, no blank screen at the bottom of a canyon.
- Map tiles for the corridor you are fishing, stored on the phone rather than fetched
- Conditions and the newest shop report saved alongside them, so the plan survives the drive
- Every snapshot is stamped with when it was taken and the app shows that age. Stale data that admits it beats fresh-looking data that does not
This is why RiseCast is a real app and not a web page. A browser tab cannot hold a map pack for a drainage with no service.
Downloaded region
Madison River
- Map tiles
Madison, Ennis to Varney
18 mi corridor
- Access points
11 marked
ramps, parking, bridges
- Conditions
810 cfs, 54F
USGS 06041000
- Latest shop report
Evening caddis
cited and linked
Saved 6:42am, 5h ago. RiseCast stamps every offline snapshot and shows its age. Stale data that says so beats fresh-looking data that lies.
Illustration with sample data
Rise Score
One number, and the reasons behind it.
Flow against the stream's own healthy range, water temperature against the species holding there, barometric trend, cloud cover, season, and hatch probability. The score never hides behind a black box: it tells you what is helping and what is hurting.
- Scored per stream, not per region, so a blown out tailwater does not drag down the creek next door
- Capped in water too warm to fish ethically, with a plain warning instead of a green light
- Recalculated as gauges report, so the number is current when you check it at 5am
Today, live
Flow against the stream's own healthy range, water temperature, barometric trend, cloud cover, season, and hatch probability. Public inputs, available to everyone.
Shipping with Circles
Every catch you log grades the score that predicted it. Verified catches count for more.
RoadmapGuideCast
Working guides fish the same water 180 days a season. Through GuideCast, their verified observations become a correction layer no public-data model can reach. Not built yet.
Anyone can build a model on public gauge data. Nobody can buy a season of guide observation.
Best hours
Stop fishing the whole day.
The timeline scores the next 48 hours one hour at a time. Major and minor solunar periods, sun angle, the daily temperature swing, and the hatch window for that water, folded into a single curve you can read at a glance.
Best window today: 6:10p to 8:05p. Evening caddis, falling light, water holding 54F.
AI Fly Box
A guide's answer, not a catalog.
Current flow, water temperature, light, the regional hatch model, and the latest report from a shop on that water all go in. Specific patterns, sizes, and how to fish them come out. Regional hatch data tells you what should be coming off. The shop report tells you what actually is. The answer is better when it reads both.
AI Fly Box
ProElk Hair Caddis #14 to #16
Dead drift the seam, twitch on the swing
Pheasant Tail #16 to #18
Dropper, 18in below the dry
Zebra Midge #20
Deep in the slower inside bend
The promise
We never sell your spots.
Spots and catch locations are private by default and enforced in the database with row level security, not hidden behind a setting in the app. Our own client code cannot read another angler's coordinates. Share what you choose with private circles of people you trust, and nothing else moves.
We do not sell your data, we do not hand your water to advertisers, and we do not run a marketplace for spot access.
Private by default
New spots and logged catches are visible to you alone until you act.
Enforced in Postgres
Row level security policies, tested in CI, are the enforcement point.
Fuzzed in aggregate
Any shared heat map uses coarse grid cells, never exact points.
Analytics opt in
Off until you turn it on, and coordinates are scrubbed before any event.
Circles
The only people who see your water are the ones you named.
A circle is a small, invite-only group: your regular crew, your brother in law, the two people you actually trade information with. Share a catch, a photo, notes on how the water fished, or the exact spot. You decide which of those goes out, every time you post.
- Invite only. No follower counts, no public profile, no discovery feed that puts your water in front of strangers
- Sharing is per post. A photo and a note is one decision, exact coordinates is a different one
- The same row level security that keeps spots private is what makes circle sharing work, so a circle is a real boundary and not a display setting
Ennis Crew
4 members · invite only · open to all catches
- DR
Dana
Yesterday, 7:40p
Rainbow, 18.4inVerified
Back eddy above the island. Elk Hair Caddis #16, dead drift. Water came up 40 cfs overnight.
Exact spot shared
- MT
Marcus
Tuesday
Brown, about 21inEstimate
Streamer on the sink tip, first hour of light. Bring the 6 weight.
Photo and notes only
Nothing here is visible outside this circle. A circle picks its own tournament rules when it is created: verified catches only, or open to all. Illustration with sample data.
Verified catches, not fish stories.
Every fishing story is a claim. Length gets rounded up, the good ones grow over a season, and nobody can prove anything. We are partnering with Fishtechy to change that. Drop their Proof Ball next to your catch, take one photo, and their AI returns verified length, girth, and weight in seconds. RiseCast carries those numbers into your journal untouched, where they lock.
The Proof Ball is the part that makes it hold up. A known-size object in the frame gives the AI something real to measure against, so the number is derived rather than guessed. It also means no tape measure and no hanging a fish from a scale, which is the same reason we cap scores in warm water: the less time a trout spends out of the river, the better.
A verified number means nothing alone. It means everything the moment someone might doubt you.
Verified catches are what make Circles real: compare against your crew on numbers that hold up, and run your own tournaments with outcomes nobody can argue with. Length based and catch and release native. No weigh-in, no livewell.
Drop the Proof Ball
Set it next to the fish and take a single photo. No tape measure, no scale, no second pair of hands.
Numbers in seconds
Fishtechy's AI returns verified length, girth, and weight, with a confidence score attached.
It lands and locks
RiseCast attaches it to the journal entry, immutable from then on, enforced in the database.
- Unverified catches are still yours to log. The badge is a bonus, never a requirement
- Verification carries a measurement, never a location. Your spot is not part of it
- Values are range checked on the way in, so a bad payload cannot mint a badge
Journal entry
Rainbow trout
Madison River · Oct 19, 7:52p
- Length
- 19.4in
- Girth
- 10.2in
- Weight
- 3.1lb
Confidence 94.2%
Measured against a Proof Ball and imported straight through. Nobody typed these numbers in.
Locked once attached. The measurement cannot be edited afterward, enforced server side.
Preview of an unreleased flow
About Fishtechy
Fishtechy builds the Proof Ball: put it in frame, take one photo from your phone, and get verified length, girth, and weight back in seconds, with minimal handling of the fish.
Visit fishtechy.comVerified catches are in development and have no release date yet. Fishtechy and Proof Ball are trademarks of Fishtechy, used with permission.
Who makes this
I got tired of guessing in the parking lot.
Every trip started the same way at 5am. Pull up the gauge, squint at the forecast, try to remember what the water did last week, and guess. Some days I guessed right. Plenty of days I burned three hours learning I was wrong.
There are apps that show you where the rivers are. I wanted one that tells me which river to drive to, and what hour to be standing in it. So I built the thing I had been doing badly in my head.
The other half is simpler. Every angler I know has water they will not put on the internet. RiseCast keeps your spots private in the database itself. We do not sell them, to advertisers, to other anglers, or through a marketplace. That is not a feature I added. It is the reason I would use this instead of the alternatives.
Brandon
Pricing
Live conditions are free. Judgment is Pro.
The map, access points, and live gauge readings cost nothing. Pro unlocks the Rise Score, best hours, the AI Fly Box, offline regions, and journal insights.
Founding price $23.99 for the first year (then $39.99), or $4.99 a month, after a 14 day free trial.
Compare free and ProClosed beta
Montana and Colorado first.
We are opening in two states so the stream coverage is real rather than a thin national map. Tell us where you fish and we will send a TestFlight invite when your wave opens.
Fish somewhere else? Sign up anyway. Where the requests pile up is where we go next.