How we make the lanes.
Every Bass Lanes layer is computed from public data, by our own software, and checked by hand on a review map before it ships. Nothing is copied from another company's maps or lanes.
The steps
- Find the boats. Every usable satellite and aerial photo of the lake since the dam closed is searched for boats: running boats (with a wake) and boats sitting still.
- Running lanes. Where running boats line up date after date, a corridor forms. Lanes are routed along the corridors through water deep enough on the depth model, kept out of the timber standing in the photos, then straightened where a boat at speed would run straight.
- Idling lanes. The slow stretches: out of each ramp, under bridges, and through old timber.
- Fishing hotspots and heatmaps. Where boats sit to fish on many different days, away from the lanes, month by month.
- Areas of interest. The roadbeds, bridges, crossroads, homesites and wells on the land before the lake, from the old maps and well records.
- Review. Every lane is looked at on a review map and decided running or idling by hand; the computed result only proposes.
What "computed from public data" means
The lanes come from where boats have been seen, not from someone driving them with a GPS. A lane says "computed from public data" until a local guide has checked it on the water; only lanes checked that way say so, with the date. Each lane also records the lake level it needs: the level that leaves 3 ft of water along all of it on our depth model. That's a model figure, never a promise that a lane is clear.
Sources and credits
| For | Source | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Boats under way and boats fishing | Sentinel-2 (ESA Copernicus), Landsat 8 and 9 (USGS/NASA), SPOT 1-5 (CNES SPOT World Heritage), OrbView-3, and the Texas aerial photography of TxGIO (NAIP, TOP, StratMap) | Free; public domain or open licence. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data. |
| Depth | The Texas Water Development Board's volumetric survey of the lake | Free public data |
| Timber left standing | 1983 photos taken while the lake filled (NHAP, USGS), the January 2015 low-water photos (TxGIO), and the USGS maps photorevised from 1978 photos | Public domain |
| Old structure | USGS topographic maps of 1958-60 and the Texas Railroad Commission's well records | Public domain / public records |
| Lake level | USGS gage readings and the Texas Water Development Board's daily history | Public domain |
| Names | USGS GNIS and the National Hydrography Dataset | Public domain |
| Weather | The US National Weather Service | Public domain |
The app's Street and Satellite basemaps are Mapbox's, shown for display only: nothing is traced from them, and they're never in the files for your unit. We never use Google Maps or Earth imagery, Esri imagery or OpenStreetMap data to make lanes.