You already know the holiday pattern. Drive to the coast. Launch. Spend half the day looking for water that “looks right.” Come back with a story about current, wind, and empty sand.
AlgoCatch is a fishing planner for the Adriatic, not a plotter and not a fish-finder. Open it from the car, the harbour, or the rocks and read the bottom before you leave. Depth contours, Folk-5 seabed class, and habitat scores for the species people actually chase on this coast.
It covers Slovenia, Istria, Kvarner, Dalmatia, and the Italian shore from Trieste to Ancona. It does not cover the rest of the Mediterranean - yet. But will soon. It does not tell you it is safe to run that line. Take a proper marine chart and a licence for the country you are fishing.
WHAT YOU SEE
10 m depth contours from EMODnet bathymetry. Folk-5 bottom classes: sand, rock, mixed ground, posidonia. Habitat layers that score how well a pin matches the structure a species uses. Gilthead (orada) stays on the free map. Dentex, pandora, bass, pelagics, and the rest sit behind VIP.
Modes match how people actually fish here: trolling lines that follow a contour instead of a straight guess, anchor spots on the class change, shore jigging on hard ground, surfcasting on nearshore sand. Pin a point and the habitat checker returns depth, bottom type, and a fit score. That score is a model match, not a live count. Green water on the map is not a promise that a fish is sitting there at 07:00.
FREE VS VIP
Free: the map, depths, Folk-5 seabed, gilthead habitat, trolling / anchor / longline, and a small number of route suggestions per day. No card required.
VIP (in-app purchase): the other species at full scores, unlimited routes, shore jigging, surfcasting, spearfishing, 3D seafloor, and the extras on the paid plans. Week, season, yearly, and lifetime unlocks are sold in the app. Restore purchases on a new phone.
WHO THIS IS FOR
Visiting anglers who want to shortlist water before they book the boat or buy the Croatian or Slovenian licence. Skippers and guests on a boat week who pick the next anchorage or trolling band the night before. People who already fish the north-east Italian shore and are tired of guessing the bottom from Google.
If you want worldwide spots, solunar widgets, and a social feed of other people’s catches, this is the wrong app. WikiCatch and the generic fishing maps already do that. AlgoCatch only exists because those maps still leave you guessing on this specific sea.
WHY THE MAP EXISTS
Two Adriatic anglers built it. Gregor has more than 30 years on this coast. Lenart has 20 and runs boats. The original problem was simple: off Savudrija the water deep enough to fish sits hundreds of metres off the beach, official charts give you a number, and that number still does not tell you sand from rock or orada from dentex.
Users have written back that they recognised dentex structure they already knew, and that a barracuda came from a pin the map pointed at. Treat that as “the bottom matched,” not as a guarantee. Wrong class still blanks you. Ten extra metres of empty sand is still a miss.
WHAT THIS APP WILL NOT DO
It will not replace Navionics, Garmin, or paper. It will not sell you a licence. It will not run in the background as a navigator. It will not invent fish in empty water. If you use it on a moving boat, someone else should be driving.
Start on the free map. If gilthead and two routes a day are enough, stay there. Upgrade only when you need the other species or the extra modes.
Plan the day before you burn fuel. Depths, Folk-5, species. SI, HR, NE Italy.