We posted earlier about watching fish-counts over the dams to monitor when the fish are in the river. Some other sites on teh web are helpful - like Tide Predictors: http://tbone.biol.sc.edu/tide/tideshow.cgi?site=Astoria+%28Youngs+Bay%29%2C+Columbia+River%2C+Oregon&units=f
NOAA also has many weather and river condition monitoring sites on the Columbia and coast - they are very nice to see water temps, wind, and even barometric conditions with DOES affect the fishbite! Nothing gives a steelhead a bad case of 'lockjaw' like a quickly changing weather front. Here's NOAA's site: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/data_menu.shtml?stn=9440422%20Longview,%20WA&type=Meteorological+Observations
One of my favorite sites lets me track river levels and volume - it stinks to drive to the Siletz, visions of steelies in my head only to see the river is way too shallow for the driftboat! Doh! So, we watch this site for days before the plans are made: http://waterdata.usgs.gov/or/nwis/uv/?site_no=14305500&PARAmeter_cd=00065,00060
Years ago I wrote software that would text-message me the tide and weather info for any of these websites on-demand. It was great but now out-dated.
One thing I'd love to see on the web is more web-cams... especially at the good fishing holes so you can see what the hog-lines look like BEFORE trying to slip into them! "We're gonna need bumpers on the boat today!"
Both Oregon and Washington have great boating resources on-line for launches, etc: http://www.boatwashington.org/
My older son and I have plans to put wireless cameras on the Longview Bridge - to not only show the hoglines, but so we can make software to track which slots in each hog-line are the most 'productive'. Not too tough to have the software keep tabs on which locations have boats drifting out the most... then maybe even track the ridges in the river the fish are moving through! Now if we could only get sponsors to foot the bill... any takers?
