Checking Buoys and Why Is It Important?

A buoy is a way to get data straight from the source. There are 882 buoys in Big Buoy. Some of them are actually offline and some return stale data. We aren’t going to hide those buoys. It’s important that everyone knows they exist and are out there. They are plotted on the map so you can see exactly where they are. This helps you know where the information is coming from. I’ve listed a few ways I use the buoy map below.

Checking Water Temps

I’m located in the Chesapeake Bay. Our fishery changes by the season. We have some fish that migrate in and out of the Chesapeake Bay as well as some fish that just migrate around the Chesapeake Bay. The water temperature dictates where they will be. The fun part of this is learning that when a buoy hits a certain temperature, a bite is about to happen. You can be the first one there and land on something epic this way.

The not fun part of using buoys is that some of our fish (Speckled Trout) will die when the water gets too cold. I find myself checking the buoys daily during a freeze to see what the temperature is at. In the winter of 2026, our water stayed cold for way too long and we lost a ton of fish. It’s hard to measure the amount of fish that died but it’s easy to measure the amount of time the water was in the fatal zone.

Wave Height, Swell and Secondary

The best way to know what a swell is like is to go straight to the source. A buoy tells it like it is. For surfers, this tells them what the swell is like but other factors like the structure of the bottom go into it but it gives them a base to work with. For people fishing offshore, this tells someone exactly what the conditions are right now which can be quite helpful.

Wind

A wind forecast is exactly that, a forecast. It’s trying to predict how the wind is going to be. I think every time I’ve gone out in a blown wind forecast, I’ve checked a buoy to see what the wind actually was. If you’re using every forecast model (Pro feature), it’s also an easy way to tell which model is right and which one you should use for the day.