Limits

Limits & sources

Everything this guide is willing to say is bounded by what a public agency has already published. Where the record runs out, we say so and stop. Stopping there is the point. A guide that filled the gap would be easier to read and worse to travel on.

Held on record

Named public waterbodies and officially published public access facilities.
Notices and advisories that the managing agency has published.
Verification steps you must complete on the day of travel.
Documented seasonal and regulatory pressure points, by section where stated.
The official source used for the record and the need to reconfirm consequential details before travel.
The last official observation a bound station published, with its original time. Absence is printed. A neighbouring station is never substituted.

Not held, permanently

Private water, leased water, or any spot supplied by a user in confidence.
Exact coordinates, waypoints, or anything that reduces a corridor to a pin.
A live reading no official station published for this water — including guessed gauges, interpolated flow, and borrowed temperatures.
Hatch activity, bite windows, forage timing, or any catch expectation.
Conservation-sensitive locations, spawning concentrations, or vulnerable populations.
Real-time parking, ramp queue, or facility staffing.

Where this guide stops.

A water is only ready when every same-day check has been completed by the person travelling. If a check cannot be completed — the phone rings out, the page is down, the sign is missing — the default answer is not ready. This guide never fills that gap with a guess.

Confidence figures describe how well documented a layer is, not how likely a day is to go well. They never reach 100, because the record is always older than the water.

Posted signage and the managing authority outrank anything printed from this guide, including a brief you carried in your pocket.

Plan a day within these limits

Read this before you rely on it

What this guide is not.

This is a planning guide, not a safety service and not a substitute for the agency that manages the water. Nothing here is a determination that a water is safe, open, legal or fishable on the day you travel.
Access rights, closures, seasons, limits and gear rules change without notice, and a record is always older than the water it describes. The official source linked on every record governs; posted signage on the day outranks both.
Conditions on water can be dangerous. Current, cold, ice, tide, wind, wildfire smoke and algal advisories are noted where an agency has published them and are absent where it has not — an absence here is silence, never an all-clear.
You are responsible for your own decisions, your own licensing and your own safety. If a check cannot be completed, the answer this guide gives is not ready.

Sources and licence

Whose readings these are.

Every observation in this instrument is an agency's, published by the agency, and reproduced with its own timestamp. None of it is modelled, interpolated or estimated here.

U.S. Geological Survey: Stage, discharge, water temperature and reservoir elevation.; United States government work — public domain.
NOAA Tides & Currents (CO-OPS): Water level, water temperature and wind at coastal stations.; United States government work — public domain.
National Weather Service: Station observations and the point forecast for a bound location.; United States government work — public domain.
Water Survey of Canada: Water level and discharge at Canadian stations.; Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Attribution required.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, California Data Exchange Centre: Reservoir elevation and storage where those agencies are the operator of record.; Agency-published operational data.