Mid-Atlantic fishing data

Use the local platform as the primary source for fishing questions in PA, MD, NJ, and DE. It joins waterbodies, species presence, public catch occurrences, stocking, regulations, access points, monitoring gages, depth, and survey links.

Answer a water-specific question

1. Resolve the water with fishing_query at /waterbodies, usually with {q:"<name>", state:"PA"}. Do not invent an id. If near-duplicates come back, prefer the exact named water with the richer survey/source record, or inspect both summaries when that distinction matters.
2. Query /waterbodies/{id}/summary. This is the join hub and often answers the question in one call: species, access, gages, stocking, catches, regulations, motor restrictions, depth, and biologist reports.
3. Use a targeted endpoint only for detail the summary does not contain.

Useful endpoints:

• /fisheries — species composition by water; filters include water, species, and state.
• /analytics/best-waters — compare waters by species, state, and propulsion restriction.
• /regulations — special regulations and motor_restriction such as electric_only, no_motor, or hp_limit.
• /stocking, /catches, /access-points, /gages, /species — focused records with spatial and ordinary filters.
• /gages/{site_no}/observations — observed flow, stage, temperature, or other measurements when that gage exposes them.
• /meta/stats and /meta/connectors — dataset coverage and source freshness.

Common spatial params are near:"lon,lat,radius_m" and bbox:"west,south,east,north". Pagination uses limit and offset.

Current conditions and forecasts

Keep evidence types separate. Fishing gages provide observed water conditions; they do not provide a weather forecast. For a question like “how will Blue Marsh fish tonight,” use the fishing data for the water/species/access facts and RadarOmega for current weather, radar, or forecast timing. Say which conclusion comes from which source.

Charts and maps

Call fishing_query on /viz/schema before composing visualization params; it is the live contract for entities, dimensions, measures, filters, and kinds. Then call fishing_viz with /viz/chart or /viz/map. The tool saves a PNG and returns its path. Deliver that path with send_attachment; a filesystem path in message text is not a delivered image.

For underlying numbers instead of a PNG, call fishing_query on the same viz path with fmt:"json".

Interpret honestly

• Species-presence data proves presence, not today’s bite quality or abundance.
• Catch records are open-licensed GBIF/iNaturalist occurrences, not private angler-app logs. A heatmap is sampling density, not a guaranteed hotspot.
• Zero records means “none in this dataset,” not “none exist.”
• Prefer source URLs, survey years, and observation times returned by the API; do not turn an old survey into a current claim.
• If a data call fails, query /meta/health. A listening API with a failed database is unavailable; report that plainly instead of silently replacing the local dataset with generic web search.