About Big Buoy

I’m a lifelong fisherman. I think my first fish was a spot caught off Chicks beach when i was 3 or 4 but I actually don’t remember. It was a part of my childhood growing up and has remained a very important part throughout my life. It’s taken me all over the world to cool places such as Alaska, Belize, Mexico and all of the great fisheries in the lower 48. That being said, I call the Chesapeake Bay my home.

I’m a Product Designer during the day and the idea of Big Buoy came while I was working on a product for a Fortune 50 company a couple years ago. I needed something similar for fishing. Since I worked fulltime, I was often checking 5-6 apps at a time to figure out when to call out of work to fish, which i did and still do quite a bit.

The goal of Big Buoy is to make this easier. We want to give you all of the information you need to figure out when to go out. And if you are already out, we want to provide you a tool that makes your life a little easier. We aren’t going to tell you where to go or what to fish for. Thats on you. The discovery is the best part. But we’ve made getting the data to make those decisions a little bit easier.

Stacking the Cards

I’ve always thought the best time to go fishing is when you can. That being said, if you are trying to take some time off to go, it’s best to stack the cards in your favor. There’s no one golden condition where it’s definitely going to be on when you go. And sometimes it’s all lined up and it looks perfect, but it just isn’t happening.

The number one most important thing to a successful trip by far is to be in a good biomass of fish that are feeding. Now with that out of the way, I try to stack a few things in my favor if I’m going to take off.

• Wind Direction and Speed: Some spots fish better with wind in a certain direction and at a certain speed and some spots, you just want it to be calm.
• Moon Phase: There are a few moon phases I do better on than others but this won’t stop me from going.
• Weather: For some species, an overcast day is a can’t miss. For others, you might want to stay home.
• Tide: In the Chesapeake Bay, some areas are best fished on an incoming or an outgoing. This is an important one to watch. I’m well aware that in some fisheries, tide is minimal and it isn’t as big of a factor.
• Solunar: If I can line up a sunrise feeding period, sign me up.
• Water Temperature: This one’s more important for fish migrations but is huge when trying to get there when the biomass gets there.

So How Do I Use Big Buoy to Stack the Cards?

If you want to be over the top you can set up a 7-day or 16-day (Pro) forecast with the conditions you want. If a day hits all of the conditions, it’ll be marked as ideal in your forecast. You could also enable the weekly spot digest which will tell you what days are good to fish. Or you could just keep an eye on Big Buoy and make the call. All the data is there.

But Does It Work?

I personally am using this every trip I’m out and for figuring out when to go. It works. And if I find something that isn’t working, it’s fixed. The weather data is a mix of a weather service we pay for and NOAA. The buoys are all pulled directly from NOAA. If you see something that doesn’t quite look right, check the Buoy out. Those are real time readings.

And if you do find something that’s off, let us know. We will fix it as soon as possible.

Tight Lines,

Charlie & The Big Buoy Team