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Importing

Every mark you've ever made, on one private map.

Your fishing history is scattered — pins in an old app, waypoints in the fishfinder, and a camera roll full of catches going back decades. Fishing Codex takes the lot, two ways: photos straight from your camera roll, or a GPS file. Here's exactly how, and why the odd photo comes in with no location.

Way one: import photos — with the tide worked out

Most catch photos taken on a phone carry the GPS position and the exact date and time inside the file. Import them from your camera roll and each becomes a private spot on your map — and here's the part no shoebox of pins ever gave you: the app computes the tide and moon state for the moment each photo was taken. A snapper from a 25-year-old photo comes in knowing whether the tide was rising or falling that morning. Photo imports run up to 200 photos a day, and everything imported is private to you.

Way two: import a GPS file (GPX, KML or CSV)

Got marks in a fishfinder, a chartplotter, or another fishing app? Export them and feed the file straight in — Fishing Codex accepts GPX, KML, and CSV, and a single file import carries up to 10,000 spots. An account holds up to 10,000 spots in total, captured and imported alike. Importing is free, your spots sync to the cloud, and import is never blocked by any listing rule — bring in the lot whether or not you ever list a single one.

Photo imported with no location? Here's why

Some photos simply have no GPS to read. Screenshots never carry location. Photos sent through WhatsApp, Messenger, or social media have their location data stripped by those platforms before they reach you — that's their privacy behaviour, not a fault. Images downloaded from the web are stripped the same way. And if the camera's location permission was off when the photo was taken, the position was never recorded at all. Edited or re-exported copies can lose it too. The fix: import the ORIGINAL photos from your own camera roll, not forwarded copies — and turn location on for your camera so every future catch photo carries its position.

Getting waypoints out of your fishfinder

Every unit's menus differ, so check your manual for the exact steps — but the shape is the same across the mainstream brands: most Garmin, Lowrance, Simrad, and Humminbird units can export their waypoints to an SD card or through the manufacturer's companion app, usually as a GPX file. Since Fishing Codex accepts GPX, KML, and CSV, any mainstream unit's export comes across. If your unit writes a proprietary format instead, free converter tools such as GPSBabel turn most of them into GPX.

Why bother? Your history starts working for you

Imported spots aren't just dots — they join your condition statistics. Because every import carries its tide and moon at the time it was taken, the app can show your real catch patterns — best tide stages, moon phases, and seasons per species — computed across your whole history, not just what you log from now on. It all lives on one private, offline map, and your spots back up to your account (photo backup has a storage cap — 200 MB free, 10 GB with App Pro). Twenty years of fishing finally answers the question it always could: when.

Old marks can earn — for a limited window

Normally only spots captured with the in-app camera can be listed on the marketplace — that's the authenticity rule. But during the one-time global 90-day early-adopter window, spots imported from your own fishing history can be listed too, with at most 50 of these legacy listings live at a time. When the window closes, it closes for everyone, forever — from then on only in-app-camera spots are listable. Importing itself never closes and is never blocked; only the listing of imported spots has a window.

Can you trust paid fishing spots?

Fair question — you're buying knowledge from a stranger. It works the way any marketplace works, same as TradeMe or Facebook Marketplace: the seller's reputation is on the line. Every creator has a public profile, reviews can be written only by verified buyers and claimers — one review per spot or creator, so nobody stacks them — and creators earn tier badges built from their review counts. The spots themselves are either GPS-verified catches logged with the in-app camera, or the creator's own imported fishing history listed during the legacy window. And the honest cap: a listing is fishing knowledge — the where, the when, the how — not a guarantee of catching fish. Nobody can sell you that.

Bring it all in — importing is free

Import your photos and files in the free app, then browse what local anglers are listing. Free spots can be claimed in the app or on the web; buying happens at fishingcodex.com.

Are paid spots worth it?

Written for the skeptic: what you're actually buying, what nobody can promise, and how to test free first.

Old marks worth money?

Imported spots can be listed during the 90-day early-adopter window — how selling works without going public.

Make the history talk

Set your own limits and rankings — every rating measured by your standards, across every imported spot.