Fly AI

AI fly fishing picker

Pick a river and a date. The Fly Picker shows what's hatching and ranks the flies most likely to get eaten, with the shop, guide and blog reports behind each pick.

Open the Fly Picker River reports

Free and open to everyone: no club, no sign-in.

How it picks flies

  1. What's hatching. It starts from a hatch chart for the month, region and water type: the insects and other foods on the water.
  2. What local reports say. It matches 210 dated reports from 28 fly shops, guides and blogs to the flies in its 368-fly catalog. Each pick lists the reports that named it, with links. Reports from your own river come first, and when a river has none the pick says so instead of passing off another river's reports as yours.
  3. Conditions. Water temperature, sky, wind and flow adjust the ranking and the advice at the top of the list, such as tying on a dry only if fish are rising.
  4. Your kind of fly. Narrow it to dry flies, emergers, nymphs, wet flies and soft hackles, streamers, poppers or saltwater flats flies.

A rules engine, not a chatbot

Every fly comes from a catalog of 368 patterns and every citation is a real, dated report. Nothing is generated. That is why it can show its work, and why it will say "no reports for this river" when that is the case.

Rivers with their own reports

The picker also covers 10 kinds of water in four US regions: Southeast and Gulf, Northeast, East and Midwest, and West.

Questions

Is the fly picker really AI?

It is a rules engine, not a chatbot. It scores flies against hatch charts and dated reports and shows the reports it used; it doesn't write answers or invent flies. The part of Fly AI that uses a language model is the trip planner.

Which rivers does it cover?

8 rivers have reports of their own: Androscoggin River, Caney Fork, Elk River, Hiwassee River, Magalloway River, South Holston River, Tellico River, Watauga River. Anywhere else it works from the hatch chart for your region and water type, and says so.

Where do the reports come from?

Dated posts that local fly shops, guides and blogs published themselves. Each pick links to the reports that named the fly. Fly AI keeps fly names, dates, links and short notes, not the posts themselves.

Which kinds of water and fish does it handle?

10 kinds of water: freestone rivers, tailwaters, spring creeks, small mountain streams, trout lakes, bass ponds and warm lakes, warmwater rivers, saltwater flats, ocean surf and estuaries.

Can it tell me what is hatching today?

It shows what the hatch chart expects for the date, region and water type, and adjusts for water temperature, sky, wind and flow. For a current read, the river pages carry the latest shop reports with their dates.