Fishing Calendar & Tide Times

Review by eFreeware

I'd point anyone who plans fishing trips around moon and tide cycles toward Fishing Calendar & Tide Times. It is built for the angler who wants to know when the bite is likely to be on before loading the car, rather than guessing from a general weather app. The developer's pitch is straightforward: solunar periods, tides and weather rolled into a single score for whatever water you have in mind.

That combination is the reason the app exists. For anglers who want one summary per spot, this app concentrates tide, forecast and moon phase information in a single view. For freshwater anglers chasing bass, trout, pike, walleye, carp or panfish, and for saltwater, surf, kayak, fly and ice anglers, the same information applies.

It has over 100,000 installs, a 4.5 average from 4,552 ratings, and has been on Google Play since 2017, which suggests a settled product rather than a new experiment. It is free to install, carries no ads, and offers in-app purchases.

The angler this fits

The clearest fit is someone who fishes the same handful of waters regularly and wants to compare them quickly. Because you can save spots with GPS and check conditions side by side, deciding between two lakes or between an inshore mark and an offshore run becomes a matter of reading the scores rather than doing arithmetic on tide charts. Anyone who has driven an hour to find dead water will recognize the appeal.

I'd also expect beginners to get value from it. The feeding periods give a reason to choose one morning over another, and the fish library gives context for what comes out of the water. Someone learning to read tides and moon phases gets a structure to hang those lessons on, without needing to understand the underlying astronomy first.

Experienced anglers are the other obvious audience, particularly those who already plan around solunar tables and tide movement but keep that information scattered. Having the forecast, the tides and the catch history in one place is the argument here. The app covers freshwater and saltwater worldwide, so the same tool works whether you are wading a river or running offshore.

Solunar periods and moon data

Day, week and month views of the solunar calendar form the app's core. It marks major and minor feeding periods, which the developer presents as bite times, so you can see at a glance where the stronger windows fall. Planning a week around those windows, or scanning a month for the days worth booking off, is clearly the intended use.

Moon data goes deeper than a simple phase icon. The app lists moonrise, moonset, and the times the moon is overhead and underfoot, which are the anchors for the feeding periods. Sunrise and sunset times are included for any location worldwide, so the daylight window sits alongside the lunar one.

What I like about this arrangement is that it turns a vague idea, that fish feed more at certain times, into something you can put on a calendar. You still have to decide whether the window suits your schedule and your water, but at least you know when it falls.

Tides, charts and marine weather

Tide tables and charts cover thousands of stations worldwide, with high and low tide predictions. For saltwater anglers, that is the practical half of the planning problem: knowing when the water is moving, and how much. The charts give the shape of the day rather than just the two extremes.

Weather sits alongside the tides. There is a marine forecast plus hourly and seven-day forecasts, so wind and conditions can be weighed against the tide state. The app then scores the best fishing conditions automatically, folding moon phase, sunrise and sunset, tides and weather into a single efficiency score.

That score is the feature I would use first. It is a summary rather than a substitute for judgment, and experienced anglers will have their own opinions about how much weight each factor deserves. As a quick filter for which day of the week to target, though, it is the kind of thing that saves a lot of cross-referencing.

Spots, map and comparing waters

You can save unlimited fishing spots with GPS and pick them from a worldwide map covering lakes, rivers, lagoons, beaches and offshore marks. Once spots are saved, the app is set up for comparing conditions between your favorites, which is the workflow the whole design seems to point at.

The value here is repetition. A spot you fish every spring, another you visit on holiday, a third you are still learning: all of them sit in the same list, each with its own tide and weather picture. Checking three waters in a minute is a realistic goal, and it beats re-entering coordinates each time.

The map is worldwide, so the same approach works wherever you travel. I'd expect this to be one of those features that seems minor until you have a dozen marks saved and stop thinking about it.

Catch log, cloud sync and sharing

The catch log lets you photograph a fish and record species, size, weight, weather and bait, building a personal journal and catch history over time. That combination of conditions and results is what makes a log useful: after a season, you can look back at what the weather and tides were doing on the days that produced.

Cloud sync keeps the log available across phones and tablets, so the record is not tied to one device. Catches can be shared with friends or with the wider angler community, which turns a private journal into something more social if you want that.

Two newer additions sit alongside the log. Fish Identify takes a photo and returns the species name, family and typical size range in seconds, and the result can be saved straight into the log. The fish library holds more than 500 freshwater and saltwater species with size and weight records to measure a catch against. For anyone who occasionally lands something unfamiliar, that pairing is genuinely useful.

What it costs

The app is free to download and shows no ads, which is unusual for a free tool in this category. It does offer in-app purchases, so the free experience and any paid elements sit side by side.

My reading is that the sensible approach is to install it, use the solunar and tide features for a few trips, and see whether the catch log and fish library earn their place in your routine. That is the honest test for a planning app: does it change which day you go?

How it compares with the alternatives

The obvious comparison is a general weather app, which will give you wind and rain but not feeding periods or tide charts. A dedicated tide app covers the water side well but stops there, and a solunar table on its own tells you nothing about conditions. Fishing Calendar's case rests on having all of it in one screen with a score on top.

The other alternative is paper and habit: a tide booklet, a moon phase glance and a notebook. That works, and plenty of anglers have used it for decades. The advantage of an app is the automatic scoring and the searchable log, which a notebook cannot match.

Where a specialist tool might still win is depth. If your fishing depends on one very specific data source, a narrow app built around it may go further than a general planner. For most anglers juggling moon, tide and weather, one combined view is the more practical choice.

A planning tool worth trying for tide-led anglers

Fishing Calendar & Tide Times does one job well: it tells you when conditions line up, for the water you actually fish. The solunar calendar, tide tables, marine forecast and automatic score cover the planning side, while the catch log, fish identification and 500-species library cover what happens once you are there. It is free, ad-free, and backed by a 4.5 average from thousands of ratings.

It suits anglers who plan trips around bite windows and tide movement, whether they fish freshwater or saltwater, from shore or from a boat. Beginners get a structure for learning when to go, and experienced anglers get their scattered reference points in one place.

If you already keep a tide table and a moon calendar to hand, this is a reasonable replacement. Install it, save a couple of your regular spots, and judge it on whether the next trip goes better than the last.

What's new in version 2.2.4

Fish Identification: Instantly identify fish species with your camera. Snap a photo of your catch and find out what you caught, with the top matches linked straight to the fish library.