The Best Fishing Apps for UK Anglers in 2026

Short answer

Most UK anglers end up with two or three apps, not one. A venue finder or booking app tells you where to go. A weather app tells you when. A catch log remembers what worked so you can do it again. For most people that means Fish Buddy or Catch, the Met Office app, and a photo-based log like CastLog.

Here is what each kind of app is good at, and which ones are worth a place on your phone.

What a good UK fishing app needs to do

UK fishing is different from the American fishing most big apps are built around. Much of it happens on club waters and day-ticket lakes rather than public land. Weather swings fast. And the species list (carp, pike, bream, tench, roach, perch, barbel, trout) is not what a US bass app expects.

So before you download anything, ask three questions:

Does it know UK venues and clubs?
Does it record the conditions for you, or make you type them in?
Will you still have your records if you stop paying?

Venue finders and booking apps

Fish Buddy is built for the UK and Ireland. It helps you find venues and clubs nearby, with contact details and directions, plus weather and tide data and a species library. If you are new to an area and want to know where you can legally fish, it is a good place to start. You can also browse named waters near your town on this site.

Catch is a booking app for UK fisheries. You can reserve a peg, see lake maps and log what happened on the day. There is a free version and paid tiers. It is most useful if the venues you fish are on it.

Social and mapping apps

Fishbrain is the biggest fishing app in the world, with millions of logged catches and maps of where people report fishing. Its strength is the crowd. Its weakness for UK anglers is the same thing: much of that crowd is in the US, and a lot of UK fishing happens on private water that does not show up on a public map.

Weather

Met Office Weather is free and is the most reliable UK forecast you can get on a phone. Air pressure, wind direction and rain radar are all there. If you are serious about how pressure affects fishing, check it before every trip, or use our live fishing conditions checker.

Catch logs

This is where most anglers lose information. You remember the big fish. You forget the swim, the bait, the wind and the pressure that went with it.

A catch log fixes that, but only if it is quicker than not bothering. That is why CastLog works from a photo. You take a picture of the fish and it names the species, estimates the size, and saves the spot, time, weather and conditions automatically. Over a season it shows you your personal bests and the conditions you actually catch in.

We wrote a longer guide on what makes a fishing log app worth using if you want the detail.

Our pick for most UK anglers

To find somewhere to fish: Fish Buddy, or Catch if your local venues are on it.
To check the weather: Met Office.
To remember what worked: CastLog.

That combination covers where, when and what, without paying for three subscriptions that all do the same thing.

Download CastLog on the App Store

Questions

Is there a free fishing app for the UK?

Yes. Met Office Weather is free, Fish Buddy and Catch both have free versions, and CastLog is free to download and gives you 3 free AI identifications a day.

Do I need a licence to use these apps?

The apps don't need a licence, but you do. In England and Wales anyone aged 13 or over needs a rod licence from the Environment Agency to fish for freshwater fish. Most club and day-ticket waters also need their own permit. See how to join a UK fishing club.

Can an app identify a fish from a photo?

Yes. Several apps now do this. CastLog is built around it and handles common UK coarse species as well as trout and sea fish. See our guide on how to identify a fish from a photo.