Methodology & Data Sources

Where the data comes from

The backbone of this site is the network of 50 state fish & wildlife agencies and their open-data feeds — stocking schedules, license fees, season and limit tables, and public-water access points. Where a figure depends on a specific regulation or fee, we cite the source agency and the year on the page itself (for example, the license summary on every city and state page shows the agency and retrieval year).

U.S. government works are used under 17 U.S.C. §105 (no copyright). We reformat and aggregate them; we do not alter their meaning.

How we verify

• Every figure is checked against a primary source before it is published.
• Retrieval dates and source names appear on the relevant pages so you can judge freshness yourself.
• The cross-state stocking intelligence layer and the live Fish Run Timelines are derived in-house from those agency sources, not scraped from unofficial forums.

The "verify locally" rule

When a figure cannot be confirmed from a primary source — a local stocking number, a county-specific fee, a small-water access point — we mark it verify locally or omit it rather than guess. On city pages without a curated local report, we tell you plainly and point you to the responsible state agency (with its public phone number and official link), so you can confirm before you travel.

Refresh cadence

The underlying dataset is refreshed at least annually, and ad-hoc when an agency publishes a change (new fees, season adjustments, closures). Corrections reported through the contact form are triaged and fixed on the next publish. We keep a versioned changelog on the open dataset.

Open data & reuse

The curated datasets — including the 50-state agency contact index — are published as downloadable JSON under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license. You may reuse them for research, apps, or outreach with attribution to FishFig.

What we are not

We are an independent editorial project, not a government agency or a legal authority. This site is informational only and is not a substitute for official state agency regulations. Always confirm the details that matter with the source agency before you fish.