Fish Washington

Name: Fish Washington
Rating: 4.3 (6939 reviews)
Author: Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife

Sport Fishing Regulations

Free · Designed for iPad

6.9K Ratings
Ages

9+
Years
Category

Sports
Developer

Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife
Language

EN
English
Size

347
MB

Sport Fishing Regulations The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is excited to announce a new sport fishing regulations mobile application for Washington state! Use this mobile app to access current Washington Sport Fishing Rules and emergency fishing rule changes. This free app is designed to convey up-to-the-minute fishing regulations for every lake, river, stream and marine area in the state. New features for 2026 include:  Log your catches—even off the grid Track your salmon, steelhead, halibut, sturgeon, and crab catches—online or offline. Check and display your license privileges Secure your licenses and know exactly what you're eligible for—anytime, anywhere. Fish Washington also now includes: Emergency regulation delivery. Map upgrades: New iconography for restrictions and water body features. New base maps to improve the user experience. Interactive mapping to help anglers find fishing opportunities near them. Location-enabled United States Geological Service (USGS) river gauges. Full water body name and description or portion to emergency regulation cards. NOAA tidal predictions for marine water bodies and lower Columbia River. Details on harvest limits and allowable gear for fishable species in each body of water. Access to the WDFW website and instructional videos designed to convey when, where, and how to fish in Washington. Locations of boat launches and other fishing access points. Ability to add waypoints on maps, and report poaching in progress. Downloadable updates and offline capacity designed for those who may not have cell service in remote areas or on the water. Washington state offers anglers some of the most diverse fishing opportunities available anywhere in the world. In a single weekend, you can dig for clams, troll for salmon, drop a pot for Dungeness crab, fly fish for steelhead, trout or bass, jig for halibut or rockfish, and bait fish for catfish, tuna, lingcod, or sturgeon. Maintaining this variety of fishing opportunities necessitates correspondingly diverse ― and sometimes complex ― fishing regulations. To make these regulations easier to understand, WDFW developed the Fish Washington mobile app. Refer to our website for more information.

Ratings & Reviews

4.3

out of 5

6.9K Ratings

Seals
04/11/2023

Highline3880
More than a review , the site has been very handy with some of the fisheries especially with my local one area seven closing down. It’s handy to be able to know where you can still go and what opens however, I hope they will step up and make things a little more user-friendly, such as prawns and halibut days. If Washington fish and wildlife wants more user support, they really need to make an effort to show the negative impact that the native salmon commission has they are hurting us all. Commercial tribes, and sports mission alike. Also, at some point in time we have to address the elephant in the room and get rid of some of these invasive seals. The natives no longer hunt them and the local orcas no longer eat them since in the late 1800s there primarily food source the seals were nearly wiped out. So they had to turn to salmon. To survive long enough that they did not educate their offspring that seals were a food source so wants to seal population came back, and the natives were no longer allowed to have them. They’re only other natural predator of the orca have lost their instinct. No we are stuck with an over population with an alpha predator that we are unable to control. The tribes are unable to harvest, and New York is no longer realize that they’re a food source. Washington fish and wildlife will use the lack of food for the orcas as an excuse to keep the rest of us on the water meanwhile, there are solutions to make things better. Come on guys. It’s not that difficult to manage this resource. This is coming from a avid sports fisherman, lifelong commercial fisherman as well as an Alaskan native. So I’m not coming at this as any bias from anyone of the three greatly affected.
Seals
04/11/2023

Highline3880

More than a review , the site has been very handy with some of the fisheries especially with my local one area seven closing down. It’s handy to be able to know where you can still go and what opens however, I hope they will step up and make things a little more user-friendly, such as prawns and halibut days. If Washington fish and wildlife wants more user support, they really need to make an effort to show the negative impact that the native salmon commission has they are hurting us all. Commercial tribes, and sports mission alike. Also, at some point in time we have to address the elephant in the room and get rid of some of these invasive seals. The natives no longer hunt them and the local orcas no longer eat them since in the late 1800s there primarily food source the seals were nearly wiped out. So they had to turn to salmon. To survive long enough that they did not educate their offspring that seals were a food source so wants to seal population came back, and the natives were no longer allowed to have them. They’re only other natural predator of the orca have lost their instinct. No we are stuck with an over population with an alpha predator that we are unable to control. The tribes are unable to harvest, and New York is no longer realize that they’re a food source. Washington fish and wildlife will use the lack of food for the orcas as an excuse to keep the rest of us on the water meanwhile, there are solutions to make things better. Come on guys. It’s not that difficult to manage this resource. This is coming from a avid sports fisherman, lifelong commercial fisherman as well as an Alaskan native. So I’m not coming at this as any bias from anyone of the three greatly affected.
Could be a great app but....sync issues
06/14/2018

Fan of Starbucks
I was excited to get this app, but every time I open it, it gives me a message that says it failed to sync and the last time it synced was April 18, 2018. I have tried to get it to sync, but it won’t. Even with the last bug fixes, I am still having issues. How do I fix so I can use the app?Updated review and changed from 3 stars to 4 stars. I deleted the app and re-installed it per Jake’s instructions. Took a few try’s to get the information updated from the Dept. site but it finally did update and it’s working fine so far. I just hope that I don’t have to uninstall/reinstall every time there is an update available. You might work on that for the next updates. Thanks.

Developer Response
Hello,We apologize for the inconvenience. We definitely want everyone to be able to use the app and for the experience to be awesome. Our best guess is that the local database got corrupted. Please uninstall the app by long-pressing on it's icon, then re-install from the store. Please let us know if this resolves the issue. If it doesn't, please shoot us an email mobileappdev@dfw.wa.gov and we'll schedule a call to investigate further.Jake
Could be a great app but....sync issues
06/14/2018

Fan of Starbucks

I was excited to get this app, but every time I open it, it gives me a message that says it failed to sync and the last time it synced was April 18, 2018. I have tried to get it to sync, but it won’t. Even with the last bug fixes, I am still having issues. How do I fix so I can use the app?Updated review and changed from 3 stars to 4 stars. I deleted the app and re-installed it per Jake’s instructions. Took a few try’s to get the information updated from the Dept. site but it finally did update and it’s working fine so far. I just hope that I don’t have to uninstall/reinstall every time there is an update available. You might work on that for the next updates. Thanks.
Developer Response 05/29/2018
Hello,We apologize for the inconvenience. We definitely want everyone to be able to use the app and for the experience to be awesome. Our best guess is that the local database got corrupted. Please uninstall the app by long-pressing on it's icon, then re-install from the store. Please let us know if this resolves the issue. If it doesn't, please shoot us an email mobileappdev@dfw.wa.gov and we'll schedule a call to investigate further.Jake
Salmon/steelhead river fisherman
08/14/2018

Lil rowbot
1st a question: does this app provide up to date salmon steelhead fishing regulations for rivers (Columbia river, Snake river, etc.)?If I was able to get past the “Updating regs. This may take a minute..”, I would be able to answer this question myself.. However, the app downloads the regs fine, then stalls updating for 10+ minutes before I get frustrated and shut the app down. I’ve tried updating the app, re-installing the app, and waiting for much longer than the ‘minute’ of updating.. to no avail.This is a great move forward with Washington fishing regs, especially for salmon/steelhead fisherman who have to dig through the abyss of emergency regs to find out if/when/where we can fish for these beasts.. I don’t understand why it has to be so difficult to determine if I can or cannot fish on a specific river. Idaho makes it infinitely easier to read regulations, maybe Washington can take a page from their book, or maybe the whole book...
Salmon/steelhead river fisherman
08/14/2018

Lil rowbot

1st a question: does this app provide up to date salmon steelhead fishing regulations for rivers (Columbia river, Snake river, etc.)?If I was able to get past the “Updating regs. This may take a minute..”, I would be able to answer this question myself.. However, the app downloads the regs fine, then stalls updating for 10+ minutes before I get frustrated and shut the app down. I’ve tried updating the app, re-installing the app, and waiting for much longer than the ‘minute’ of updating.. to no avail.This is a great move forward with Washington fishing regs, especially for salmon/steelhead fisherman who have to dig through the abyss of emergency regs to find out if/when/where we can fish for these beasts.. I don’t understand why it has to be so difficult to determine if I can or cannot fish on a specific river. Idaho makes it infinitely easier to read regulations, maybe Washington can take a page from their book, or maybe the whole book...
Helpful at a glance
12/04/2020

tallcurt
I like the app and it’s concept, it’s super easy to use and quickly check regulations on body’s of water. I do find it hard to know where you are looking sometimes because nothing is named. It would be much better if at least the bigger rivers are named so you know you aren’t looking at a small creek. I often find myself going back and forth between this app and google maps to make sure I am following the right river/creek. The other issue I have with the app is it takes FOREVER for the emergency rules to update and half the time I just get frustrated and close the app. When the emergency rules are trying to update you can’t use the app at all. If it’s going to take forever for them to load it would be nice if you could still at least use the map because sometimes the emergency rules don’t even matter to the bodies of water that I fish. I like the app and the concept but I think it needs further development.

Developer Response
Hi, Thank you for the feedback. It is very constructive and helpful. Regarding the regs taking forever to update, I have pushed a fix for an issue where downloads were failing silently, causing the updates to never complete. We are also looking into reducing the size of the downloads and a timeout that will move the regs updates to the background, so the app can be used while things are updating. We are also looking into adding labels to named streams and rivers in a future release. Respectfully, Jake Shapley, Application Developer, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, mobileappdev@dfw.wa.gov
Helpful at a glance
12/04/2020

tallcurt

I like the app and it’s concept, it’s super easy to use and quickly check regulations on body’s of water. I do find it hard to know where you are looking sometimes because nothing is named. It would be much better if at least the bigger rivers are named so you know you aren’t looking at a small creek. I often find myself going back and forth between this app and google maps to make sure I am following the right river/creek. The other issue I have with the app is it takes FOREVER for the emergency rules to update and half the time I just get frustrated and close the app. When the emergency rules are trying to update you can’t use the app at all. If it’s going to take forever for them to load it would be nice if you could still at least use the map because sometimes the emergency rules don’t even matter to the bodies of water that I fish. I like the app and the concept but I think it needs further development.
Developer Response 02/24/2021
Hi, Thank you for the feedback. It is very constructive and helpful. Regarding the regs taking forever to update, I have pushed a fix for an issue where downloads were failing silently, causing the updates to never complete. We are also looking into reducing the size of the downloads and a timeout that will move the regs updates to the background, so the app can be used while things are updating. We are also looking into adding labels to named streams and rivers in a future release. Respectfully, Jake Shapley, Application Developer, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, mobileappdev@dfw.wa.gov