AcademyFree guide
Every card on the Weather Hub, what it is telling you, and how the Bite Score is worked out for South African dams. The examples below are the real page running on a saved Vaal Dam forecast, so tap, drag and switch things as you read.
14 min read12 chaptersBite Score v2.2.0
Bite Score · bass
A real hour from the example week. Chapter 4 shows how every point is added up.
Three switches at the top of the page decide everything you see below them. Get them right once and the hub remembers them on this device.
The day bar sticks to the top of the page as you scroll, so another day is always one tap away. Each card has the weather, the high and low, a one-word tag and the chance of rain.
Tags are checked in that order, weather first. A day with a great score and a thunderstorm still says Storms. The blue percentage is the highest chance of rain in any hour that day, not how much of the day it will rain.
Create a free AnglersHub account or sign in to read the rest of this guide. It takes less than a minute and opens every free guide in the Academy.
You come straight back to this guide afterwards.
The first card answers the only question that matters before you load the bakkie. Read it left to right: the call, the best time, then the details.
Notice the order. Safety beats the score. A day can score 80 and still say CAUTION because storms are forecast in the afternoon. Chapter 7 shows exactly that day.
A number from 0 to 100 for every hour of the next week. It is worked out from the weather alone, for bass and carp separately, using what research and experienced anglers say switches fish on and off.
Every hour starts at 50, an average hour. Each condition then adds or takes away points: warm water adds, a cold front takes away, dawn adds for bass, a storm takes away a lot. The total is capped between 0 and 100. Pick an hour below and watch the sum.
Roughly the most each one can add (green) or take away (red) for bass.
In Pro view the day becomes one graph. It is the fastest way to see when the wind picks up, when rain arrives and how the pressure is moving.
The Bite windows card turns the hourly scores into a plan. The bars are every hour of the day, and the list beside them is the stretches worth building your trip around.
Peak
The single best hour and its score, top right. A quick way to compare days.
Windows
Stretches where the score stays high (65 or more), listed with their reasons. Today's past windows drop off as the day goes.
Ask Billy
The green button opens Billy, our fishing assistant, for a go or no-go call on your exact plan.
Highveld summer storms build fast, and a carbon rod on open water is a lightning rod. The hub flags them before it talks about fish.
The hub blends the big global weather models. When they agree you can plan with confidence; when they do not, the card tells you, and you should check again closer to the day.
Models agree
Temperature within 2°C, wind within 8 km/h and rain within 2 mm. Plan away.
Some uncertainty
Mostly in line, with some spread on wind or rain. Have a backup bank.
Uncertain
The models disagree. Treat the details as a guide and check again nearer the time.
Sunrise, sunset, golden hour, moon phase and solunar times are worked out for your exact coordinates, so golden hour lines up with your bank.
Golden hour matters most. The low light at dawn and dusk adds up to 10 points for bass and 7 for carp, which is why so many best windows start before sunrise.
The moon matters less than you have heard. We show the phase because anglers like to know it, but it adds no points. Solunar periods add about 3 points, and only when they overlap golden hour. If someone sells you a moon calendar as the secret, check the water temperature first.
Everything in this guide works for free today. Pro opens the same detail for every day of the week, plus the tools that learn from your own fishing.
| Weather Hub | No account | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today's forecast, Simple and Pro view | |||
| Bite Score for bass, carp or both, every hour | |||
| GO, CAUTION or NO-GO and safety alerts | |||
| The next 6 days in Simple view | Sign in | ||
| Save your dams and pin your own spots | |||
| Pro view hour by hour for the whole week | Today | Today | |
| Live wind, rain and temperature map | Today | Today | |
| Weather models side by side | Today | Today | |
| Personal bite windows from your own catches | |||
| Offline forecast pack for no-signal dams | |||
| Ask Billy for a go or no-go call | 5 free |
AnglersHub Pro
The whole week, hour by hour, for every dam you fish.
R50a month
or R500 a year (2 months free). Cancel any time.
Or start with a free accountDo this the night before and again the morning you leave.
No. It is a weather-based guide that says when conditions favour feeding fish. It has not been tested against logged catches yet, and it cannot see your bait, your spot or how busy the water is. Use it to pick your hours, not to decide if fish are there.
Carp feed well after dark in warm water, so night hours get a few extra points for carp once the water is about 14°C or warmer. Bass get their lift at dawn, dusk and under cloud instead.
No. A full or new moon adds nothing. Solunar times (moon overhead, underfoot, rising and setting) add about 3 points, and only when they land in the dawn or dusk golden hour.
It is an estimate, not a reading. We work it out from the past few weeks of air temperature, because a dam warms and cools slowly, tuned for Highveld, Lowveld and coastal dams. It is shown as a range, like 21–24°C. Water temperature is the biggest single part of the score, so a deep or spring-fed dam can fish differently.
New forecast data comes in about every 30 minutes. The time it was updated is under the page title, and every time on the page is SA time.
The weather works for any spot in South Africa. The Bite Score is tuned for freshwater bass and carp, so treat it as a rough guide for other species.
Now read your own water.
Open the Weather Hub on your dam, find this week's best window and be on the bank before it starts.
Examples use a real forecast for Vaal Dam saved on Thu 29 Oct 2026, 19:15 SAST. Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Includes weather data from Google. Bite Score model v2.2.0.