Waterlands
Guide · Environments · 6 steps

The rig behind the rig

Drawdown, freeze-up and the front that moves birds — watched over your exact water, on one board you check with coffee.

Start building ↓USACE · NOAA
  1. Step 1 · The problem

    Step 1 of 6. Ducks answer to water and weather, not to you

    The pool drops two feet and your cattail hole is dry mud. The pothole country locks up overnight and everything you scouted is gone south. The front that moves fresh birds is in Alberta right now.

    A duck Environment watches all three — drawdown, freeze-up, fronts — over your exact water, on one screen you check with coffee.

    →NextStart on the Environments page.
    About 10 minutes to build

    One screen, the whole flyway story

    Pool elevation against the grass, the freeze line marching toward your marsh, a front-watch point 400 miles north, and legal light for your state.

  2. Step 2 · Step one

    Step 2 of 6. New Environment, tagged Waterfowl

    New Environment on the web app, name it after the water it watches, tag it Waterfowl. The tag leads the palette with the waterfowl kit — Drawdown Watch, Freeze-Up Watch, the Flyway Ladder, Blind Picker.

    This guide builds a Canyon Ferry board — Missouri River country, Central Flyway. Swap in your own reservoir and blinds.

    →NextThen attach the water.
    The New Environment wizard with a name entered and the Waterfowl tag selected
    1. 1Waterfowl — leads the palette with the duck kit
  3. Step 3 · Sources

    Step 3 of 6. Pools, blinds, and a point up north

    Attach the reservoir pools you hunt — Corps lakes serve live pool elevation — your blinds as Spots, and two weather points: one on your marsh, one hundreds of miles up the flyway as a front-watch station.

    Some water has no gauge at all, and the honest move is to say so. Freezeout Lake has no level feed from any provider — so on this board it is a weather point, which is all Freeze-Up Watch needs, and it is never shown with a pool number nobody is measuring.

    Reservoir pools (USACE)Blinds as SpotsFront-watch weather pointMarsh weather point
    TipPut the front-watch point a day’s flight north of you. Birds ride the front; a point 400 miles up the flyway is tomorrow morning’s news today.
    →NextNow build the rig.
    The builder’s source panel listing two pools, blinds and weather points with their confirmed readings
  4. Step 4 · Widgets

    Step 4 of 6. Drawdown, freeze-up, the front

    Pool Elevation with a named line at your cattail elevation is the drawdown story — when the trace crosses CATTAILS, the grass is wet and so are the birds. Freeze-Up Watch reads the overnight forecast at the marsh and calls lock-up before it happens. Front Tracker watches the northern point and estimates arrival.

    Legal Light rounds it out with shooting hours for your state, because the last question of every morning plan is the same one.

    Pool ElevationFreeze-Up WatchFront TrackerLegal LightPin Map
    →NextThe finished rig, then the tripwires.
    The Environment builder with the widget palette open over the duck board
    1. 1CATTAILS — the elevation where your hole floods, drawn on the pool chart
  5. Step 5 · The payoff

    Step 5 of 6. The lake, the freeze, and the front — one glance

    The finished board reads top to bottom in ten seconds: is the water on the grass, is the marsh about to lock, is there a front on the way, when is legal light.

    Every number on it comes from a live public instrument or the forecast — cited, probed, and honestly absent where no instrument exists.

    →NextThen let the lake call the hunt.
    The finished Canyon Ferry Rig board with pool, freeze-up, front tracker and legal light widgets
  6. Step 6 · The trigger

    Step 6 of 6. “Tell me when the birds should move”

    Three triggers cover a season. Pool over your cattail line — the hole is wet, go check it. Overnight forecast at the marsh under twenty — lock-up is coming, hunt the last open water. Hard cold and a north wind at the front-watch point — fresh birds are riding it down.

    Each one is a rule on data the board already watches. You set them once in October.

    Set it and forget it

    Also on this board

    Blind Picker reading wind against each blind, Rest Rotation from your logged hunts, and the eBird recent-sightings feed for your county.