How our reports are made

643 waters across 8 states and territories, 395 of them tied to a Bureau of Meteorology gauge and 206 with a modelled tide curve. Every number on those pages is in the table below with its source. Reviewed 2026-09-23.

Every figure and where it comes from

Figure	Source	Kind	Refreshed
Storage level of a reservoir, in metres	Bureau of Meteorology Water Data Online (KiWIS), the storage’s Storage Level series, latest value in a fourteen-day window	Measured	Every 30 minutes
Storage volume, in megalitres	Water Data Online, the storage’s Storage Volume series	Measured	Every 30 minutes
The 30-day storage chart	Water Data Online, the same series, period P30D, one value per day	Measured	Every 6 hours
High and low tide times and heights	Open-Meteo Marine, sea level height including tides, hourly, turning points of the curve; datum global mean sea level	Model	Every 6 hours
Air temperature, high and low	Open-Meteo daily forecast at the water’s coordinates, converted to degrees Celsius	Model	Every 30 minutes
Wind speed, gusts and direction	Open-Meteo current and daily, converted to kilometres per hour	Model	Every 30 minutes
Cloud cover and rain probability	Open-Meteo current and daily	Model	Every 30 minutes
Barometric pressure and its trend	Open-Meteo hourly mean sea-level pressure, read across the previous hours	Model	Every 30 minutes
Sunrise and sunset	Open-Meteo daily, in the water’s own timezone	Model	Every 30 minutes
Moon phase and illumination	Astronomical calculation from the date, on this site	Computed here	Per request
Solunar majors and minors	Astronomical calculation from the date and the coordinates, on this site	Computed here	Per request
Seasonal water temperature	A monthly curve for the water’s profile, written for the southern hemisphere and held on this site; an estimate, labelled as such on every page	Computed here	Fixed per month
The activity score out of five	Our scoring rules applied to the readings above	Computed here	Per report
The species plan and ratings	The water’s Australian species profile crossed with the month and the temperature band	Computed here	Per report
Coordinates and names of waters	Composite Gazetteer of Australia (Geoscience Australia and the state naming authorities), by API	Measured	Fixed; re-read when the inventory grows
Fishing licence fees and rules	The page of the agency that sells the licence, read on the date stamped on each state page	Measured	Re-read when the agency changes its schedule

Measured: An instrument in the water, or a figure published by the agency or authority that owns it.
Predicted: A harmonic prediction, not a reading taken today.
Model: A numerical model: a weather forecast, or a sea-level curve. Accurate in the open, less so in bays and estuaries, and never an observation.
Computed here: Arithmetic or astronomy performed on this site from the inputs named.

What we deliberately do not use

Bureau of Meteorology tide predictions: Their copyright notice allows personal use only and bars automated extraction; they are not under the Creative Commons licence that covers Water Data Online. We link them and do not copy them.
Bureau of Meteorology weather forecasts: Same terms. Open-Meteo, under an open licence, gives the forecast instead.
Catch reports from tackle shops, charters and clubs: They are somebody else’s observations. We do not reproduce or paraphrase them; angler reports on this site are written by the anglers themselves and moderated.

Licence pages and their sources

State	Agency	Read on	Page
New South Wales	DPIRD NSW	2026-09-23	source
Victoria	VFA	2026-09-23	source
Queensland	Queensland DPI	2026-09-23	source
South Australia	PIRSA	2026-09-23	source
Western Australia	DPIRD WA	2026-09-23	source
Tasmania	IFS Tasmania	2026-09-23	source
Northern Territory	NT Fisheries	2026-09-23	source
Australian Capital Territory	ACT Government	2026-09-23	source

Common questions

Where does the water level on a lake page come from?

From the Bureau of Meteorology’s Water Data Online service, which republishes the state water agencies’ gauges under a Creative Commons licence; each lake page names its station and prints the timestamp of the latest reading.

Are the tides on the coastal pages official?

No. They are the turning points of a modelled sea-level curve from Open-Meteo Marine for the water’s coordinates, and every page says so. The Bureau of Meteorology publishes the official predictions and we link them.

Is the daily report written by AI?

The daily conditions block is generated by our own scoring engine from that morning’s readings: arithmetic on real data, not a language model improvising. The written guide on each page is by the site’s author.

Why are some coordinates approximate?

Coordinates come from the Composite Gazetteer of Australia. Where a name matched several records, the choice was made by hand and is recorded in our inventory; three were corrected after the first pass and the log below says which.

Who stands behind this page

Pablo Ruiz Quintero: Founder and editor
The text is written and checked by the site’s author against the official sources listed on each page. It has not yet been reviewed by an Australian angler or editor. When a real person reviews a page, their name and the date go on it; until then, no reviewer is claimed.
Errors: Verification log
Every figure that failed a check, including ours, with the date.