A fishing journal is usually write-only.

People keep one for a season, fill in the weather and a catch count, and never read it again — because nothing in it can be compared to anything else in it. Every entry is a different water, a different lure, a different everything, and no two lines can be put side by side.

Fix the water and that changes. Hold the place still and the rest becomes readable: the record stops being a diary and turns into a set of experiments you ran without meaning to. Finding those is what this does.

The engine

Each visit records the same eleven variables — season, water temperature, level, clarity, weather, vegetation, forage, pressure, where you fished, how you fished it, and what happened. Because they are all categorical, any two visits can be compared, and the instrument goes looking for the pair that differs in exactly one of them.

That pair is the whole point. Ten things matched, one did not, and the results differ: that is a clean lead, and it is the only shape of evidence a journal can actually produce. When the results do not differ it says so too — a list of things that turn out not to matter on your water is worth more than most people’s list of things that do.

It also tells you what you have never tested. A variable that has been the same on all twelve visits is invisible and is not evidence of anything, and the trip that would change it is usually the inconvenient one nobody makes.

How much a finding is allowed to weigh

One clean pair is a lead. Two or three agreeing is a working pattern, which is where most real local knowledge lives and where most of it should honestly stay. Pairs that disagree put you back at nothing, and that is the most useful state on the ladder because it tells you the model is wrong while there is still season left to fix it.

Who it is for

Anyone with a home water — a half-mile of stream, one bay of a reservoir, a town pond, a stretch of beach. Twenty minutes from home beats the good one two hours away, because this only works if the twelfth visit actually happens.

Who should not buy it

If you fish somewhere different every time, or cannot realistically get back to one water a dozen times, it will sit empty.

What is in it

A twelve-visit ledger with a visit editor, a live strip chart of your own year, and a zone legend you write yourself.
The comparison engine: clean pairs, null results, near-misses two variables apart with the one to hold steady next time, variables never varied, and a zone and presentation tally.
The four-state confidence ladder, written out with what to do at each state.
Three diagrams, plus a chart drawn live from your own twelve visits.
Twelve blank visit sheets for a pocket, laid out to be filled in standing up.

Format, offline and printing

Two files. The ledger itself is a single self-contained web page — it opens in any browser on any device, the brand faces are embedded in the file, and once it is on your phone it works with no signal at all. There is no app, no account and no server: everything you type stays in that browser, on that device, and you can export a JSON copy whenever you want one.

The print edition is 13 pages at US Letter, laid out for a cheap printer. The twelve visit sheets and the comparison grid are the pages that matter; print them once and use them all year. It is readable in grayscale and the type is set at field sizes rather than desk sizes.

On location privacy

Zones are lettered, never named. Nothing in the file identifies a spot to anyone but you, and nothing in it leaves your browser. Please keep it that way when you share what you learn.

Where it sits beside the free work

How to Read Water and Seasonal Personality are free. Field Deck 04 is the printed card version of the same question; this is the record that answers it with your own twelve visits.

What one pair is not

A clean comparison is two afternoons. Fish move for reasons none of these eleven columns record, and the variable you were watching may have been standing next to the one that mattered. Everything here is a lead until you go back and reproduce it on purpose — and reproducing it is a trip, not a calculation.

Version 1.0 · September 2026 · Edition hth.field.one-water-twelve-visits

Your purchase includes

One Water, Twelve Visits — the ledger and comparison engine, a self-contained web page that works offline.
The Letter print edition, 13 pages, including twelve blank visit sheets.
Eligible corrections and updates to the same Edition, at no further cost.

You may

Read and print it on your own devices, as often as you like.
Use its methods and working pages in your own work.
If you guide, teach or work with clients: use it while serving them, and hand a client a completed output you produced with it.

You may not

Redistribute the publication, the blank working masters or the print file.
Resell or republish it, or put the complete work in a shared library or community drive.
Share your purchase credential in place of a purchase, or use the work for model-training ingestion.

Refunds

Fourteen days, no reason required. A broken, missing or materially misdescribed file is corrected or refunded without relying on that cutoff. Terms of Sale

comparison

One Water, Twelve Visits