Pro Angler: Highly-Rated Fishing App

Project Background

Our clients fish. A lot. Back in 2012 they came up with an idea to create an app which would provide an angler with all the necessary information about fishing, i.e. a comprehensive encyclopedia of fishing. We started development in 2012, released the app called Pro Angler, and have been updating, improving and maintaining it ever since.

Solution

Pro Angler is a fishing app (available both on iOS and Android) which contains loads of tips and insights authored by local pro anglers from US, UK and Australia. The app provides the most accurate real time marine weather and tides times, navigates the users through GPS hotspots and artificial reefs. It also shares top fishing locations, suggestions on when the best time to fish for a specific species is, a comprehensive species guide, and even a recipe book with nutritional values.

We developed iOS and Android apps and the server-side on PHP. Server-side includes a custom CMS, which allows the client to update the content of the app. We also built a WordPress plugin for users to upload captains’ reports to the database using the dashboard of the promo website. Once uploaded, the reports become available on the website as well as on the mobile app.

Having been working on this app for about 11 years now, we've implemented a bunch of new functionality, done a few redesigns, added a social aspect (users can follow each other, post their catches, get rewards, and get push notifications about the events), expanded the territory of covering, and we are ready for more.

We faced and solved a lot of field-specific problems, which was challenging and hence exciting. For example, there was a problem with displaying moonrises and moonsets — to get the right values for moon phases we created and implemented new formulas for calculating the right time when the moon rises and sets.

We continue to maintain and update the application and are happy to be part of such a beautiful project.

Technologies used

• iOS
• SQLite
• PHP
• MySQL
• Symfony
• Google geocaching API
• Objective-C
• Foundation
• AVFoundation
• AppBoy
• Facebook SDK
• Google+ SDK
• Flurry
• Storm Glass API
• Blaze Verify

Results

In 2015, the app was called “number one ranked fishing app in the U.S., providing anglers in Florida and Texas with comprehensive, real-time fishing information”, and got 400.000$ investments to grow globally.

Now Pro Angler is ranked #1 fishing app in the world. It has 100+ thousand downloads and users.