Fishing app aims to hook anglers with big data

The sport of fishing may be about to experience its biggest revolution since the 1920s, thanks to an app developed by a Swedish start-up.

Relying on the average angler's impulse to brag about a catch, FishBrain uses shared photos of fish to generate big data. The company says it has now logged enough data to predict when and where fish will bite.

Recreational fishing is one of the world's most popular hobbies. US anglers spend $48-billion (R545-billion) a year on bait and gear, says the American Sportfishing Association. That's more than triple global recorded music sales of $15-billion last year, music industry body IFPI estimates.

"Building a bigger user base is the focus for 2015," FishBrain CEO Johan Attby said. "The goal is to become the first-choice app for anglers globally."

The social network is introducing an algorithm to forecast when and where to drop a line for a particular species, based on the 225000 catches logged by users. The big-data version of the app became available on Android last week and on iOS this week.

Attby hopes to beat the popular solunar theory, first proposed in 1926, in predicting when fish will strike. FishBrain gathers data such as wind speed and water temperature while users log data on their catch and tackle. Algorithms then predict where to find nine species .

The company, founded in 2011, has 650000 users, of whom more than two-thirds are in the US. FishBrain has raised about $3.5-million so far.

The FishBrain feed is full of anglers showing off their catches and sharing tips. Users can hide details about a catch. But, luckily for Attby, anglers like to share stories.

- Bloomberg