Blue Marlin (Atlantic) - Night
ProIn development: the after-dark blue marlin map for the Gulf of America and the East Coast: its score is a 0 to 100 habitat match, using surface temperature because blue marlin stay shallow at night. Only a score of 50 and above is painted.
Updates daily; forecast in 3-hour steps
More detail
This species map is in development.
What you see. Choose the species from the Bite Intel button along the bottom of the map. The map is colored from dark blue at 50, through green and yellow, to dark red at 90 and above. On the website the legend shows that color bar and an Opacity slider that fades the map. Switch on Compare species to show more than one species at a time, each in its own color, brighter where the match is higher.
Blue Marlin (Atlantic) and Blue Marlin (Atlantic) - Night cover the Gulf of America and the East Coast. Blue Marlin (Pacific) and Blue Marlin (Pacific) - Night cover Baja.
In each pair the day map is set for daylight, when blue marlin dive through the thermocline (the depth where the water turns cold). The night map is set for the night, when tagged blue marlin spend most of their time in the top few yards. Both weigh surface temperature, temperature and salinity breaks, current speed and where currents squeeze together, how deep the surface water is mixed, how sharp the thermocline is, oxygen, water color and its edges, bottom depth, latitude, and how close a square is to bottom structure such as seamounts and rough bottom. The day map also weighs how deep the cold water starts. Use the map that matches the hours you fish.
On the website this map can carry the banner "Water signal unreliable here", with the line "Fish known structure — the shelf edge, rigs, and banks — not the heat map." It shows when one species is on the map, not in Compare species.
How to use it. Let the map narrow a big piece of water to a few areas, then check those areas on the temperature, water-color and current layers. To see what built the score at one spot, click the map on the website; on the iPhone, put the crosshair on the spot and tap the fish-scale button beside the map. A panel lists each condition with its reading and a rating from Poor to Ideal.
Who makes it. RipIQ builds this map itself, mostly from the HYCOM (U.S. Navy model) forecast and the charted bottom depth, so cloud never blanks it.
Its limits. The map shows water that looks like blue marlin water, not fish. It has eight frames a day, three hours apart, about a week ahead, with about 5 nautical miles of detail, so read areas, not single squares.
The numbers
| How often it updates | Eight frames a day, three hours apart |
| How fresh it usually is | From a forecast run started between one and four days ago |
| How detailed it is | About 5 nautical miles of real detail in the water, finer on the bottom |
| Where it covers | Gulf of America and East Coast. Baja gets the Pacific blue marlin maps instead |
| Observed or modeled | Modeled |
| What you see on screen | Squares colored from dark blue at 50, through green and yellow, to dark red at 90 and above. Under 50 nothing is painted |
Source: computed by RipIQ from the HYCOM and Copernicus model layers (temperature, salinity, currents, fronts, thermocline, chlorophyll edges) and seafloor depth.