What we collect
To just check the forecast: almost nothing. It needs no account and asks nothing about you. If you tap the 📍 button, your location is used in your browser only to find the nearest inlet — it is never sent to our servers or stored. You only create data if you choose to log a catch, capture conditions, build a custom meter, or set an alert — each covered below.
Optional sign-in (“save your stuff”)
Signing in is entirely optional — the forecast is free and anonymous whether you do or not. You can sign in with Google (it confirms your identity and shares your email and name) or with an email link (you give us your email address and we send a one-tap sign-in link). Either way we store your email — plus your name and an account ID when available — so the stuff you make — your catch log, your custom bite meters, and your captured conditions — follows you across devices. We don't sell it or email you without asking. Sign-in is handled by Firebase Authentication (Google); we never see or store a password. Want it all gone? Email us (below) and we'll delete your account and its data.
Your catches, meters & captured conditions
When you log a catch or tap Capture conditions, you're creating records: what you caught (and when, on what, plus any notes you add), the bite meters you build, and snapshots of the conditions — tide, water, wind, moon — for the inlet you're viewing, plus any species you link to a capture. Signed in, it's saved to your account and syncs across devices; it's yours, and you can delete any of it anytime.
We don't know where you actually fish. Those conditions come from the inlet's public sensors and forecasts — the NOAA station, the marine and weather feeds for the inlet you picked — never from your phone's GPS. We don't collect the coordinates of your spot, so your honey hole stays yours.
We do keep these catch and condition records in an aggregated dataset we use to make the bite forecast better for everyone — blended and weighted with lots of other anglers' data, and never published as your personal information.
Quick logs, alerts & bot protection
You can log a quick catch without an account. When you do, your device gets a random id (not your name or email) so our server can store it. Bite alerts and condition captures ask you to sign in first.
If you turn on alerts, we store your push-notification subscription and the alert settings you chose so we can send them; they run on this device and you can turn them off anytime. And to keep automated abuse off our servers, saving data is protected by Google reCAPTCHA (via Firebase App Check), which may collect device and usage information to tell humans from bots, under Google's policy.
Where the data on the page comes from
Your browser talks directly to public data services to build the forecast: NOAA (tides, buoys, satellite ocean data), Open-Meteo (weather and marine forecasts), and our own report-watcher service (which serves only aggregate keyword counts from public fishing reports). Standard web server logs (IP address, page requested) exist briefly on our hosting provider (Google Cloud Run) as with every website.
Ads & analytics
If advertising or analytics are active on this site, their providers (e.g. Google AdSense) may set cookies and collect usage data under their own policies; where required, you'll see a consent prompt before any of that happens. We don't sell personal information — we're a small team building a better bite forecast.
Contact
Questions? Write us: hello@what-inlet.com — or just ask whichever of us is at the jetty.
To the cams, shops, and report writers we link to: those links exist because your stuff is good and we want people to find it. If you'd rather we didn't link to you, tell us at the address above and the link is gone the same day — no hard feelings, tight lines either way.
This policy was last updated June 2026.