Top 3 Solunar Fishing Planner Alternatives

You have one free morning this week and you would like to spend it when the fish are actually moving rather than when it happened to suit your calendar. Solunar theory says the moon’s position drives feeding activity, and the practical output is a handful of windows per day worth prioritising.

The tools that produce those windows are mostly location-aware services: they take your GPS position or a postcode, pull tide tables and moon data for that exact spot, and hand back a rated day with times. That precision is genuinely valuable and it comes with an assumption — that you want to hand over your location, that you have a signal, and that the service covers wherever you are fishing. Not every trip meets all three.

How to judge a fishing times tool

Does it separate major and minor periods? Majors are the longer windows around the moon overhead and underfoot; minors are the shorter ones at moonrise and moonset. Both matter and they are not the same length.

Does it include tide? For coastal and estuary fishing, tide movement often matters more than lunar position. Freshwater is a different picture.

Does it need your location? Precise local tide data requires it. A general lunar window does not.

Does it work offline? Signal at the water’s edge is not a given.

The comparison

Facts checked August 2026; plans can change.

Fishingreminder

Fishingreminder’s 24-hour clock is the clearest presentation of this data anywhere. Green areas mark major bite times, yellow marks minors, blue marks high and low tides, and the moon phase and illumination sit in the centre — so one glance tells you the whole shape of the day rather than making you read a table.

It is location-based, which is the source of both its accuracy and its constraint. Where its data covers you well, it is excellent; the further you get from a covered tide station, the more the tide element becomes an approximation.

Tides4Fishing

Tides4Fishing is the most detailed on the tide side, establishing solunar periods for each day at each specific location with the accuracy that coastal fishing actually needs. If you fish estuaries or the shore, tide timing is frequently the dominant variable and this is the tool that treats it that way.

That coastal orientation is the limit. For a lake or a river well inland, the tide component is irrelevant and you are using a fraction of what the site offers.

HuntFishSport

HuntFishSport gives you free solunar tables and moon phase forecasts for any location worldwide — enter a postcode or city, or let it detect your position, and get today’s major and minor periods, moonrise and moonset, and a one-to-five star rating for the day. The star rating is a genuinely useful shortcut when you are choosing between days rather than times.

It covers hunting alongside fishing, so there is scope on screen you may not want. That is a mild cost for the breadth of location coverage.

Tide and Moon Fishing Planner

Ours is the simplest version of the idea: enter a date and see suggested major and minor fishing windows based on moon phase and nearby tide changes for that day. No location permission, no account, and it runs entirely in your browser.

The limitations are real and worth stating plainly. Because it does not tie to a specific tide station, its tide element is a general indication rather than a local prediction — for precise coastal timing, one of the location-aware services above will be more accurate. And more fundamentally, solunar theory is a heuristic rather than a settled science: fish respond to weather, water temperature, barometric pressure, and food availability at least as much as to lunar position. Treat any solunar window as one input among several, not a forecast.

Which one to pick

• If you want the day’s shape at a glance, Fishingreminder’s clock is the clearest.
• If you fish the coast and tide timing is the variable that matters, use Tides4Fishing.
• If you are choosing which day to go rather than which hour, HuntFishSport’s star rating answers that.
• If you want the windows for a date without handing over your location, use ours.

How to do it with Tide and Moon Fishing Planner

1. Open the Tide and Moon Fishing Planner.
2. Enter the date you are considering.
3. Note the major and minor windows and plan around the ones you can actually make.
4. Check a local tide table and the weather before committing. More outdoor tools are in the tools directory.

You might also need

• Moon Phase Calculator — for the lunar picture across a longer stretch of dates.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free solunar fishing tool that doesn’t need an account?

Yes — all three services above offer free solunar data without registering, and ours needs no account at all because the site has no signup. Some do ask for location access to give you local tide data.

Does solunar theory actually work?

It is widely used and not firmly established. There is real evidence that many fish species feed on tidal and diel rhythms — NOAA’s material on tides and marine life covers the tidal influence — but the specific solunar tables sold to anglers go beyond what the research supports. Most experienced anglers treat them as a tiebreaker.

What is the difference between a major and a minor period?

Majors are the longer windows, conventionally around two hours, when the moon is overhead or directly underfoot. Minors are shorter windows around moonrise and moonset. Majors are usually rated the stronger of the two.

Final thought

Use the windows to break a tie between mornings, not to decide whether to go. Weather and water conditions will move the fishing more than the moon does.

Try the free Tide and Moon Fishing Planner