About RiverScout
Built by paddlers, for paddlers.
What RiverScout is
A free river-conditions platform for paddlers and anglers. 1,100+ rivers across all 50 states. Live USGS flows, weather forecasts, hazard reports, hatch calendars, state DNR stocking records, lunar timing for fishing, and machine-learning storm prediction — Pine River currently calibrated, more watersheds rolling in as their data accumulates.
Who built it
RiverScout is built and maintained by Jacob, owner of Pine River Paddlesports Center in Wellston, Michigan. It started as a side project after years of bouncing between USGS, NWS, state DNR sites, and fly shop blogs to figure out whether the river was actually runnable that weekend. The original problem was simple: too much data, scattered across too many places. RiverScout is the consolidation.
The mission
Make river decisions easier. Whether you're a paddler trying to figure out if your weekend run is safe, an angler checking if it's worth the drive, or an outfitter loading boats for tomorrow — the data you need exists somewhere on the internet. It just needs to be in one place, with the boring parts (unit conversions, gauge ratings, recent rain) handled for you.
What's free vs. paid
Almost everything is free. No signup required to browse rivers, check live flows, view maps, read hatch calendars, or see stocking schedules. RiverScout Pro ($1.99/mo) unlocks a personal river journal, custom alerts on your followed rivers, and a weekly email digest of the conditions you care about. Outfitter listings on river pages are free; paid sponsorship tiers are available for outfitters who want featured placement, photos, or inclusion in flow-alert emails. No display ads, ever.
How predictions work
On Pine River — and only Pine, for now — when a storm is active, Storm Tracker shows the expected peak flow with an uncertainty band. The model is trained on 5+ years of historical Pine storm events and validated to roughly ±15% accuracy on paddling-season storms. Outside that training range (e.g., ice-out floods, droughts), Storm Tracker skips the prediction rather than guess and shows a note explaining why. Other watersheds get the prediction layer when they've accumulated enough data to validate the model — measured against a paired sign test versus a naive baseline, not just headline accuracy. Pere Marquette, for example, has the historical viewer + live flow today but no peak-prediction callout, and the page says so explicitly.
Data sources
None of this data is ours; we just package it. USGS for live gauge readings. NOAA for weather forecasts and MRMS radar precipitation. NHDPlus for river polylines and watershed boundaries. State DNR feeds (Michigan DNR, Wisconsin DNR, Pennsylvania PFBC, etc.) for fish stocking and access-point catalogs. American Whitewater for whitewater run difficulty and access info. RIDB / Recreation.gov for campground data. USFS for Wild & Scenic designations. suncalc for moon phase and solunar fishing windows. Where data is interpolated, derived, or modeled, we say so on the page.
Honest limitations
RiverScout is built and maintained by one person. Data accuracy depends on government feeds and community reporting; gauges go offline, stocking schedules slip, hazards appear after the last paddler reported. If something's wrong on a river you know well — bad coordinates, wrong gauge, missing access point, river that doesn't actually exist where the map says — please report it. The fastest way is the email below. Always defer to live conditions for safety-critical decisions. Storm Tracker isn't a flood-warning system; the National Weather Service is.
Contact
Email jake@thepineriver.com or use the contact form. Response time is usually within a couple of days; faster if it's a safety issue.
Recent updates and new features: improvements log.