STOCKHOLM — The sport of fishing may be about to experience its biggest revolution since the 1920s, thanks to an app developed by Swedish startup FishBrain.
Relying on the average piscator’s impulse to brag about a catch, FishBrain uses shared photos of fish to generate big data. The company says it has logged enough data to predict when fish will bite.
Recreational fishing is one of the world’s most practiced hobbies. In the U.S., anglers spend $48 billion annually on bait, tackle, gear and trips, according to the American Sportfishing Association. That’s more than three times as much as global recorded music sales, which were $15 billion last year, according to trade body IFPI.
“Building a bigger user base is the key focus for 2015,” said FishBrain CEO Johan Attby, 40. “The goal is to become the first-choice app for anglers worldwide.”
The social network is introducing an algorithm to forecast when and where to drop a line for a particular species, based on the 225,000 catches users have logged. The big-data version of the app is available on Android and on iOS.
Niched social networks are attracting investor appetite. Strava Inc., an online community for running and cycling, in October raised $18.5 million from investors including Sequoia Capital.
Combining a specialized social network with big data, Attby hopes to beat the solunar theory — a method proposed in 1926 that’s still popular today — in predicting when fish will strike.
FishBrain’s app gathers a range of automatic data such as wind speed and water temperature while users log data on their catch and the equipment used to land it. Algorithms then predict where to find nine species, including northern pike, largemouth bass and spotted sea trout.
The company introduced its app last year and now has 650,000 users, two-thirds of whom are in the U.S.
