Why RipIQ
We fish. We built this to catch more fish and to enjoy the day more.
Less fuel burned looking. More time on the fish. More flags on the run home.
The idea came on the boat.
Last year, an hour before we had to head in, we had not raised a fish all morning. I took a screenshot of a temperature chart and asked one of the new chat programs where to go. It said run fifteen miles northeast and you will find a rip. It had made that up.
We went anyway. We ran into one of the biggest color changes I have seen in the Gulf. We fished it for forty-five minutes and did not get bit, but that was not the point. Something could read a map and point at an opportunity.
RipIQ came from that.
The season.
This year we ran three hundred miles one way on a hunch, with two five-hundred-gallon bladders on the deck. We struck out at places that looked good on the chart, more than once, and burned the fuel to find out.
As the season went on we found more fish. We won the first Gulf Summer Slam with twenty billfish. We were in them all week. We also missed more than we caught, and the replay shows us why.
That is why I believe in the history. You go back and look at the water and ask why it happened. Or better, why it did not.
What we believe.
The captain makes the call. We put the latest measured water in front of him, scrubbed back so he can see where the edge is going, and his own trips teach him the rest.
We do not tell anybody where to fish. He knows his water better than we ever will. What we can do is stop him burning fuel to find out what it is doing.
It is another tool. It goes next to the phone tree, the water shot, the sounder and thirty years of knowing the place.
Where this is going.
Every trip logged in Bite Intel teaches the next read. The more boats fishing with it, the better it gets at showing you the water that has held fish before, and how today's compares.
We intend to share what we learn with the scientists who study these fish, because a real catch with a real position is better than any tag.
We are a small company that is trying to get better every season. Tell us what you want.
Tell usBrian and Dave
Brian
He owns Blue Rush and he owns RipIQ. He fishes the Gulf out of Port Aransas and he pays the fuel bill, which is how arguments about what belongs in this app end.
Founder-run and captain-built, and the boat is not a stock photograph.
Dave
He builds the ocean-data side: pulling the satellite passes down every day and turning them into layers that open in one tap offshore.
The sources are public and they are listed below, with the citation each one requires.
Data Sources & Attribution
RipIQ ingests forecasts and observations from operational ocean data providers and public research datasets. The following acknowledgements are required by their terms of use.
HYCOM (Physics)
Funding for the development of HYCOM has been provided by the National Ocean Partnership Program and the Office of Naval Research. Data assimilative products using HYCOM are funded by the U.S. Navy. Computer time was made available by the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program. The output is publicly available at https://hycom.org.
Copernicus Marine Service
Generated using E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information; https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00015, https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00149, https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00279, https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00278, https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00051, https://doi.org/10.48670/mds-00327.
Source: European Union, Copernicus Marine Service Information or Data (2026), ©Mercator Ocean.
Seamount Catalog
Yesson, C., Letessier, T. B., Nimmo-Smith, A., Hosegood, P., Brierley, A. S., Hardouin, M., Proud, R. (2020): List of seamounts in the world oceans – An update. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.921688. Licensed under CC BY 4.0; data modified.
Copernicus Sentinel
Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2026. dataspace.copernicus.eu
GEBCO Bathymetry
GEBCO Compilation Group (2025) GEBCO 2025 Grid (doi:10.5285/37c52e96-24ea-67ce-e063-7086abc05f29).
The GEBCO Grid must not be used for navigation or for any other purpose involving safety at sea.
Additional Sources
Includes public data from NASA, NOAA, the U.S. Navy, and other U.S. federal and state government sources.
RipIQ is not endorsed by or affiliated with any of these agencies.