Bite forecast in United Kingdom

Every morning the model rebuilds an hour-by-hour bite forecast for waters across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — the Thames and the Severn, the Norfolk Broads and the Fens, Highland lochs and the salmon rivers of the Tweed and the Spey, plus the sea marks of the Channel and the North Sea. It reads air and water temperature, barometric pressure and the direction it is moving, wind, cloud cover and the season each species is in, then folds in the solunar windows around moonrise, moonset and the moon's transit. Around the coast the tide is layered on top, because a bass mark fishes to the tide and not to the clock.

The reports behind the forecast are a British mix rather than an American one. Carp lead by a wide margin, with brown trout close behind and rainbow trout third — a coarse-and-game split you would not see anywhere else we cover. After them come roach, Atlantic salmon, perch, chub, bream, pike and tench. Stirling, the Highlands, Hertfordshire, Perth and Kinross, Essex and Norfolk send the most reports, and every county page carries its own catch map and month-by-month activity.

Readings come the way British anglers actually read them — °C for temperature, miles for distance — and the switch in the header changes the system. The bite score is computed per region rather than per water, so two fisheries in the same county share it; what is genuinely local is the solunar window, computed from the page's own coordinates, and the tide on a sea mark. The forecast runs 15 days out, and past about a week treat it as a way to pick a weekend rather than a schedule. Close seasons, byelaws and rod licences are not modelled here — check the rules for your water before you go.