Know before you go.
Recreational Dungeness opens November 7. Crab Buddy scores all 66 spots from Crescent City to Port Hueneme every morning, so you know which one is worth the drive, and which two hours to be there.
Most apps average the weather. This one reads the tide.
Crabs move on slack water. A spot can have flat seas, no wind and still be dead because you turned up three hours off the tide. That is why the score weights tide timing heaviest, then swell, then wind.
Every spot has its own tide station. Ocean Beach reads from the outer-coast gauge, not the one inside the Golden Gate. They run about 45 minutes apart. Get that wrong and the whole window shifts.
Sheltered water is scored differently. Six feet of open-ocean swell is not six feet inside a harbour. Each spot carries an exposure factor, so a jetty and a bay pier never get the same number from the same forecast.
Season and gear rules are built in. Closed means a score of zero, not a cheerful 80. Rock crab spots inside the Bay stay open year-round when Dungeness is shut, and the eight spots south of Point Conception are flagged for the snaring ban.
Tide curves & crabbing windows
See exactly when conditions peak: not just the tide, but the best windows to drop your gear.
66 spots, each with its own tide station
Harbours, piers, jetties and shore spots from Crescent City down to Port Hueneme.
What the beta testers said
Unedited, from the first 59 people who used it.
“Your app is basically doing what I had to do across three websites and just eyeballing it, all in one. Loving the easy score and the windows!”
“I’ve never had a good understanding of what conditions are best for crabbing but this makes it super easy.”
“App showed good conditions for Bodega Bay on Saturday. I pulled 5 with 1 keeper gauge buster.”
“I compared it to Fish Notify and noticed that your language is easier to understand and follow.”
“Your app looks beautiful! The summaries are nice but all the hard info is all there in one place, too.”
Season opens November 7.
Be ready for the opener.