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onX Fish

This smartphone app arrives on the heels of a wildly successful platform that makes perfect sense for the angler.

onX Fish

The smartphone has become an indispensable tool on-the-water and on-ice. As a result, the marketplace is overwhelmed with fishing apps making it tough to decide which to buy, subscribe to, and download for use.

I have long used a smartphone to assist in fishing efforts, from mapping via the Navionics boating mapping app to even better (at least for Minnesota) 1-foot contour maps from which I use the waypoints saved on my boat Humminbird units via the One-Boat Network app. Yes, mapping is critical to finding good bites. Looking back to the early 2000s, I carried a now antique Lowrance H20c handheld GPS unit—the precursor to smartphone app-based mapping.

Beyond mapping, there are also fishing apps that collect the latest catches on a given body of water via crowd sourcing, some pointing you to actual spots where fish were caught and what baits were used to catch those fish. FishBrain, Fishidy, and Omnia PRO apps offer much along these lines.

But one thing I always wished for was an app that not only offered mapping but state fisheries data, including property/easement ownership and access, as well as weather, including moon phase, barometric pressure, wind, etc.

In a state with over 10,000 lakes, even crowd-sourced app data leaves a bit to be desired. There are a lot of lakes to explore, and wanting to get off the beaten path, those are the lakes I’ve always wished there was more available data for. You might say, use the DNR’s resources!

Sure, the Minnesota DNR’s LakeFinder web site and mobile portal provides lake-by-lake data but it’s a bit cumbersome—and when used with other, better mapping apps, you need to toggle back and forth, from looking at maps and diving into the latest fishing stocking/netting statistics by whatever species you’re chasing. And it only offers data one lake at a time, no comparisons.

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A Game Changer

The release of onX Fish changes all of this, offering GPS mapping, weather, and DNR-sourced fisheries data all in one app. I’ve been playing with the app over the past couple months and it’s proved especially valuable for figuring out new lakes to fish based on its ability to search for general species abundance, keeper-size fish, and trophy potential—and searchable by individual gamefish species.

The onX app will tell you what lakes best suit your fishing goal. That might be an expansive list of lakes or just a few depending on your selection criteria. Whether you’re going out fishing for the evening or need help planning a longer fishing trip, this is the app.

The Latest Fisheries Data Easier, Faster

While we’ve had LakeFinder for years in Minnesota, you’ve never been able to sort the data the way you can on onX Fish. onX is connected to that LakeFinder database so you have lightning-fast access to interpret information—not only fisheries data but special regulations as well, which has come more into play now than ever with 5 and 10 fish panfish limits and other special by-lake regulations and restrictions.

Mapping

Beyond fisheries data, onX Fish also gives you a lot of different features once you’re settle into the lake you’ve decided on exploring. There’s good mapping on many of the lakes, many with starting points ala Fishing Hotspots to give you an idea of where to start fishing with top tips and techniques for those locations.

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That aside, onX Fish’s current, comprehensive water and land mapping features something you find anywhere else except a little app downloaded by millions of hunters across the country—yes, onX Fish’s parent company, onX Hunt. Given that lineage, you get mapping in onX Fish that shows public and private land ownership, easements, access locations, and a lot more. Not sure to ask for permission to fish that private lake you’ve always wondered about? onX Fish shows the landowners’ names based on public tax record data.

Expanding Its Reach

A lot of you In-Fisherman readers might be outside of Minnesota and Wisconsin. The good news is that the company and app plan expand Midwest-side with coast-to-coast goals in mind given their other sister app, TroutRoutes, the definitive mapping app resource for all things stream, river, and trout related coast to coast.

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onX Fish’s Joel Nelson says this triad of products will only get better and continue borrowing from each other over upcoming months and years: “onX Hunt has had a very strong user experience on the hunt side and onX fish has borrowed some of that and been able to create a similar user interface for anglers that’s very intuitive. When you look around an onX Fish map, zooming in and zooming out, you can select layers within the layers. There’s a lot of power there. For ice anglers, it’s a no-brainer. You can draw snowmobile trails that will help you get into those remote lakes because it shows all the public and private land ownership information.”

Better Weather

Another great feature of onX Fish is best-in-class weather for your exact position on the map.

Weather is interpolated for your exact location. For example, if you’re fishing on Rainy Lake, you won’t be getting the weather for International Falls. You’re getting an individualized weather report for your exact GPS location.

The onX app also shows the user every moon phase for the next 30 days, including moon rise, set, and majors/minors. Daylight and sunset times for your exact location are also wrapped into the weather side of the app.

Apple CarPlay

Once again, speaking to ice anglers, onX Fish is also compatible to Apple CarPlay so you can view and use its features from the in-dash screen in your vehicle. For starters, this allows you to track your location safely on and off the ice besides helping your find a good place to set your fishhouse or start running and gunning. You can literally navigate your vehicle over the lake contours and move seamlessly between any customized waypoints you set up.

Recent Imagery

Among onX Fish base maps, you can select also select recent satellite imagery updated every two weeks that give you a good idea of what lake areas are freezing up first. It also reveals where ice roads are established and where other angler traffic has been. For big lakes, this will give you an idea of what areas might have received less pressure and could hold more fish.

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Take Home

Looking for an app that will help you make the best educated decision of where to fish using fisheries data, mapping, weather, and more? Look no further than onX Fish, what I believe will become a de facto fishing app across the country as the app and company grow.




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