BirdTrout

Terms

The short version: use it, save your spots, they're yours. The map is our best reading of public data, not a guarantee — check the water and the regulations yourself before you fish or hunt.

Last updated 13 August 2026 · dotonesix llc, Michigan

Using BirdTrout means these terms apply to you. They're between you and dotonesix llc, a Michigan limited liability company, which makes and runs BirdTrout at www.birdtrout.com.

What BirdTrout is

A map for fly fishing and upland bird hunting. It joins public hydrography, state fisheries data, public-land ownership and live USGS gauge readings into one view, and adds a model that estimates water temperature on reaches where no gauge exists. Some of what you see is measured. Some of it is estimated, and the app tries to be honest about which is which — an estimate is labelled as one.

What you can do

• Use it. All of it is free today, account or no account.
• Save spots, name them, write notes on them, and sync them across your devices.
• Export your own spots to GPX or GeoJSON and take them wherever you like.
• Use it to plan trips, personally or professionally — a guide planning a day on the water is exactly who this is for.
• Link to it, screenshot it, send a spot to a friend.

What you can't do

• Scrape it, crawl it, or bulk-download the data files behind the map. The underlying public datasets are public — go get them from USGS and the state agencies. What we've built on top of them is ours.
• Resell BirdTrout or its data, or repackage it as your own product or map layer.
• Hammer it. Automated traffic that degrades the service for other people, or that runs up our bills with third-party APIs, will get blocked.
• Break into other people's accounts, or try to.
• Use it to do something illegal — trespass, poach, fish a closed season, take over a limit.

The data is a starting point, not an authority

Specifically, and because these are the ones that matter:

• Water temperature. Gauge readings are USGS provisional data — they get corrected later, and sensors drift and fail. Anywhere without a gauge, the number is modelled from air temperature and watershed characteristics. It's a good guess. It is not a thermometer in that pool.
• Flow and safety. Nothing here is a safety assessment. Rivers rise, ice forms, wading gets deadly, and a gauge reading from an hour ago at a station twelve miles downstream tells you very little about where you're standing. Your judgement about whether it's safe to be there is yours alone.
• Public land. Ownership boundaries come from state and federal parcel data and are approximate. A line on this map is not a survey and it is not permission. Property changes hands, easements expire, and boundary data lags reality by years. If you can't tell whose ground you're on, don't be on it.
• Access sites. Listed access can be closed, seasonal, gated, or require a permit we don't know about.

Regulations change; our copy of them may lag

Fishing and hunting regulations — season dates, gear restrictions, size and creel limits, trout stream type designations, special-regulation reaches, county-level rules — are set by state agencies and they change. We rebuild from the agencies' published data periodically, which means there is always some window where our copy is behind theirs. Emergency closures and in-season rule changes may not appear here at all.

The state's current regulations are the law. This map isn't. Before you fish or hunt, check the current guide from the relevant agency — in Michigan, the DNR's Fishing Guide and Hunting Digest. If what you read here disagrees with the state, the state is right and you should tell us so we can fix it. You are responsible for your own licences, tags, permits and compliance.

Your account

You can delete your account any time by emailing andrew@dotonesix.com from the address on the account; your email, spots and settings go with it, and we can't restore them afterwards, so export first if you want them. The privacy page covers what we hold and how to get it back.

We can close an account too, but only for a real reason: scraping, abuse, attacks on the service or other people's accounts, or use that's plainly illegal. If we do, we'll email you and tell you why, and unless the account was being used to attack something, you'll have a chance to export your spots first.

Paid tiers, later

Nothing costs money today and nothing you're currently using is going to be moved behind a paywall as a surprise. If we add a paid tier, it'll be for new capability, the price and what it includes will be stated plainly before you're asked for anything, and payment would run through Stripe under its own terms. Until that exists, no part of this document creates a bill.

Uptime

There's no uptime promise here. It's a small service, it depends on other people's APIs, and those go down. If USGS is having a bad day, so are the temperatures on this map. We'll fix what we can, when we can.

Liability

BirdTrout is provided as-is, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose. To the fullest extent the law allows, dotonesix llc is not liable for any injury, loss, citation, fine, property damage, or other harm arising out of your use of BirdTrout — including decisions you make about where to fish, where to hunt, whose land you're on, or whether conditions are safe. Where liability can't be excluded, it's limited to what you've paid us in the last twelve months, which today is nothing.

Put plainly: this is a map, not a guide, not a game warden and not a weather service. The decisions in the field are yours.

Governing law

Michigan law governs these terms, and any dispute belongs in the state or federal courts sitting in Michigan. If some part of this document turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.

Changes to these terms

We can change these terms. If we make a change that actually affects you, we'll tell you by email. Small typo fixes we won't bother you about — the "last updated" date at the top will move and that's it. Continuing to use BirdTrout after a change means you're fine with it; if you're not, delete your account.

Contact

andrew@dotonesix.com. Including for "your map says this reach is open and it isn't" — that one we want to hear about quickly.