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Lake info at your fingertips
Avid angler Chris Skeeles believes it’s good to share and he’s leaving a legacy to prove it.
Skeeles, of Louisville, not far from the upper end of Berlin Reservoir, grew weary of regularly looking up lake and weather conditions before heading out to the lake.
As he collected information sources for his own education, he realized his sources would also serve others who toil to find the same stuff. He built and deployed a website and Facebook page that now makes Skeeles’ data accessible for all.
“It is a new website that aggregates all the different water data points from various agencies and puts it all on one easy-to-read pages with awesome graphs and charts,” Skeeles said.
He compiles all of the information and posts it free of charge, with no sign-up required. To access, go to mylakeinfo.com. To view the Facebook version, log on to your Facebook account and find the Berlin Lake Fishing page.
“I created this for myself because I was tired of having to go from government site to government site and interpret hard-to-read charts and numerical readouts,” he said. “This makes it nice and easy, and I converted a lot of the data into simple-to-read bar charts. I also included some weather data into the web version.”
With the Berlin information published and programmed for automatic updates, Skeeles plans to move on to sites for West Branch and Mosquito.
Skeeles fishes primarily for walleyes. He’s a regular at Berlin from Easter through Thanksgiving. He sees his online data displays as inspiration for his weekly forays at Berlin.
“I can look at that page and my imagination starts decrypting the information, almost as if I am fishing with my mind. Where are they hiding or feeding today?” he said. “Since the government makes these data records available to the public, why not make the best use of them?”
When he’s not fishing, Skeeles owns and operates The Magic Picture Co. at Hartville Marketplace, making custom lenticular prints for customers. He also has an e-scrap business to recycle valuables from computer and electronics equipment.
He and his wife also operate Ohio Audio, dealing in bulk sales of earbuds for schools, libraries and the general public.
His entrepreneurialism extends beyond his businesses to the fishermen’s data displays he’s established on the web.
Even though the website and Facebook page have only been up a couple of weeks, he’s already tweaking.
“The site continues to improve with new features added each day,” he said. “Today [Friday] we shared an animated trend chart to those who follow the Facebook automated reports.”
Naturally, not all of Skeeles’ info is derived from government information resources. Much is based on his on-the-water experience. He takes as many opportunities as possible to fish, most of the time at Berlin.
“I have been on Berlin every weekend but one since March. It’s been slow on the walleyes, which is typical for spring, but the white bass were active and the crappie are coming into the bays.”
So we can take it from someone who knows – from data and from experience – that it’s high time to hit Berlin.
“When I am not tending to my business ventures, I am either fishing or thinking about fishing,” he said.