BUBBA Fishing

Review by eFreeware

BUBBA Fishing is a free app from AOB Products Company, published under the Sports category and built around one piece of hardware: a smart fish scale that sends weight and catch details to your phone over Bluetooth. The pitch is a record of your fishing that fills itself in, rather than a notebook you scribble in with wet hands. That is the reason to consider it, and it is also the reason it will not appeal to every angler.

The app covers both freshwater and saltwater, and suits anyone from a first-season angler to someone who has fished the same lake for decades. Around the logging core it layers tournaments, an interactive map and a social feed where members post trips and catches.

It has been installed more than 10,000 times and holds a 4.4 average from 496 ratings, with 56 written reviews. Those numbers are modest next to the biggest outdoor apps, and they suggest a product that is still building its audience rather than one that has already won the category. The download is free, there are no ads, and in-app purchases are offered.

A catch log that writes itself

The central job here is recording what you catch. The smart scale transmits data over Bluetooth, so a fish goes on the hook, gets weighed, and lands in your log without you typing a number into a form. For anyone who has tried to keep a paper log on a rocking boat, the appeal is obvious: the record happens at the moment the fish is in your hand, not hours later when you are guessing at the weight.

The log is not limited to individual fish. The app also records trips and waypoints, which means a day on the water can be reconstructed later as a route with catches attached to points along it. That is a more useful shape of data than a simple list of weights, because it lets you connect where you were with what you caught there.

Everything collected shows up on an interactive map, which the developer describes as a way to see your fishing journey from start to finish. I would expect that view to be the part that rewards patience: the value of a log grows with the number of entries in it, so a new user sees very little on the map and a three-year user sees a personal atlas of spots.

Tournaments, including hands-free ones

Tournaments are the second strand. You can join events hosted by other anglers or host one yourself, and entrants compete and share their catches and stories through the app. For a club that runs a season-long competition, or a group of friends who want a reason to keep fishing through a slow month, this turns the log into a scoreboard.

The feature I find most interesting is the auto log mode for tournaments. A tournament can be started and then left to run on its own, with entries recorded automatically as you fish. That addresses the obvious friction of phone-based competitions, where the person who remembers to open the app has an advantage over the person who is actually fishing.

How well that works depends on the scale doing its job every time, since the automatic entries rest on the same Bluetooth connection as ordinary logging. The two work as one system, and that is how I would think about it: tournaments are an extension of the scale, not a separate game you can play without it.

The social side and the map

The community layer lets you add friends, follow their fishing journeys and keep up with posts about trips and catches. There is also a place to share experiences, tips and tricks with other enthusiasts. This is the part of the app that does not depend on hardware, and it is where the developer is trying to build something that outlasts a single product purchase.

I would treat the feed as a companion to the log rather than a reason to install on its own. Following a handful of people whose water you know makes the posts more useful than a general stream, and the friend system exists precisely so you can narrow it that way.

The interactive map sits between the two halves. It holds your own catches and waypoints, and it is the clearest expression of what the app is for: a private record first, a shared one second.

What you need before the app does anything

The requirement worth understanding is the scale. Catch logging runs through the Bluetooth smart fish scale, so the app's headline feature depends on owning that device and having it with you, charged and connected. Without it, you are left with the community, the map and the tournament structure, which is a thinner proposition.

The connection is described as automatic and the logging as effortless, with no detail on pairing steps or what happens when a connection drops. I would simply note that a wireless link between a wet piece of hardware and a phone is the kind of thing that determines whether a logging habit survives its first season.

The app was released in February 2023 and last updated in September 2026, so it has been through a few years of development. It is free to download, carries no ads, and offers in-app purchases.

Anglers who already carry the scale

The clearest fit is someone who fishes regularly, wants a record of it, and either owns the BUBBA scale or is considering one. For that person the app is the software half of a system they have already bought into, and the automatic logging is the whole point.

A second fit is the club or friend group that wants a lightweight tournament structure. Being able to host an event, invite other anglers and let the app collect entries during the day removes most of the administrative work of running a competition.

The center of this app is the connected scale and the tournaments built around it, which is where its attention goes. That is not a flaw so much as a description of what it was built to do.

A logbook worth having if the scale is already in your bag

BUBBA Fishing is a well-defined app: it logs catches, trips and waypoints from a Bluetooth scale, puts them on a map, and wraps tournaments and a community around them. The free download, the absence of ads and the 4.4 average from 496 ratings make it an easy thing to try for anyone who already owns the hardware.

That is a question to answer before committing to a paid tier, not a reason to avoid the app.

My recommendation is straightforward. If you fish with the BUBBA scale, install it and start logging, because the map and the tournament tools only become interesting once there is data in them. If you are looking for a general fishing companion with no hardware involved, the community and map are here, but the automatic logging that gives this app its character is not.