Methodology
Data & sources
Every figure on StockedWaters traces back to public data published by a US state fish & wildlife agency. Here's exactly how that works.
Where the data comes from
We use the open data that state wildlife agencies publish themselves — fish-planting schedules, recently-stocked-waters reports, and equivalent feeds — delivered as CSV exports and GIS/ArcGIS map services. We do not gather data from private individuals, and we do not estimate stocking that an agency did not report.
How we process it
Our pipeline does four things, in order:
- Normalizeeach agency's format into one consistent schema (waterbody, species, date, count, size, location, source).
- Geocode waterbodies to coordinates where the agency or a public gazetteer provides them, so we can map them honestly.
- Validatedates and drop values that can't be real.
- Attribute every record back to the exact source feed it came from.
Integrity rules we never break
- No invented precision. If a source gives only a month or a year, the page shows only a month or a year. Missing dates read “not reported,” never a guess.
- No implausible dates.Records that decode to before 1900 or into the future are rejected in favor of the agency's reported year.
- No fake locations. Maps and “near me” results include only waters with real coordinates.
- Always cited. Each page names the reporting agency and the date of its latest report.
States we currently cover
These states have full waterbody, species, and near-me pages:
Additional states are already ingested and are being brought online. StockedWaters is an independent project and is not affiliated with any agency.
Found a discrepancy?
If our data disagrees with an agency's own published record, the agency is the authority. Tell us at support@stockedwaters.app or via the contact pageand we'll trace it back through the pipeline.