These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of Fish Factor, a service of Robert Jacobo III doing business as IndigeFish Fishing Co. (“Fish Factor,” “we,” “us”), at fishfactor.app (the “Service”). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the Service.
What Fish Factor is
Fish Factor is a saltwater fishing “bite predictor” for Southern California. It combines public tide, buoy, weather, and solunar data with a scoring model to estimate when and where fish may be biting, and it provides tools for logging catches and for running catch-photo-release fishing tournaments. Forecasts and scores are estimates and decision support only — not guarantees of fish, conditions, or safety.
Safety and your responsibility
Fishing and any ocean, pier, jetty, or shoreline activity carry inherent risks. You are solely responsible for your own safety and decisions. Always check real conditions, weather, and warnings before you go; follow all local laws and posted rules; carry a valid California fishing license where required; and respect Marine Protected Area (MPA) closures and size, bag, and season limits set by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Regulation information shown in the app is an informational summary only — the current official CDFW regulations always control. Do not rely on Fish Factor as your sole source for safety or regulatory decisions.
Eligibility and accounts
You must be at least 18 years old, or have permission from a parent or guardian, and be able to form a binding contract. You agree to provide accurate information, keep your login credentials secure, and you’re responsible for activity under your account. Notify us promptly of any unauthorized use. Entering a tournament has its own minimum-age and parent/guardian consent requirements, set out in the Tournament Participation Agreement.
Acceptable use
You agree not to misuse the Service: no scraping or bulk-extracting data, no attempting to breach security or access others’ accounts, no unlawful activity, and no submitting false, staged, or manipulated catch reports, photos, measurements, or tournament entries, or content you don’t have the right to share.
Your content and the community map
You keep ownership of the catches, photos, and notes you submit (“Your Content”). By submitting it, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, display, and reproduce Your Content to operate, improve, and promote the Service — including showing catches at their recorded location on our public community map, and featuring catches you share publicly (your photo, species, and display name) in Fish Factor and IndigeFish channels such as YouTube and social media. If you’d rather a specific catch not be featured, delete it or email us and we’ll stop using it in new content. Don’t upload content you don’t have the rights to, or that is unlawful or infringing.
Our intellectual property
The Service — including the Fish Factor and IndigeFish names and logos, the app’s design, the spot catalog and spot notes, species profiles, regulation summaries, the scoring engine, and the forecasts it produces — belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual-property law. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Service for your own personal, non-commercial fishing. You may not resell, republish, or commercially exploit the Service’s data, forecasts, or content without our written permission. If you send us feedback or ideas, we may use them without restriction or obligation to you.
Copyright complaints (DMCA)
If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, email indigefish@gmail.com with: a description of the work and where it appears on the Service; your name and contact information; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, their agent, or the law; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act for them; and your physical or electronic signature. We will review complaints and remove infringing content where appropriate. If your content was removed by mistake or misidentification, you may send a counter-notice with the same contact details. We may terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.
Tournaments and competitions
Fish Factor includes tools for running catch-photo-release fishing tournaments, derbies, and similar events (each, an “Event”). Every Event has a tournament director. During our pilot phase, Events are hosted by the Fish Factor team; over time, independent directors will be able to pay Fish Factor a flat platform fee to host their own Events.
Fish Factor’s role is the platform — registration, entry submission, scoring, and leaderboards. Fish Factor does not collect entry fees from participants. If an Event charges an entry fee or offers prizes, that fee is set, collected, and administered by the Event’s director, and prize funding and fulfillment are the director’s responsibility; except where Fish Factor itself is the director, we are not a party to that arrangement and are not responsible for it. Some Events — including our own pilot Events — are free to enter, with no entry fees and no prizes.
To register for an Event you must accept the Tournament Participation Agreement, a separate assumption-of-risk and release agreement that is incorporated into these Terms by reference, including its media and likeness release. Each Event’s page states its own rules — the entry window, boundary, eligible species, scoring format, any entry fee, and any prizes (the “Event Rules”) — and the Event Rules are part of these Terms for that Event.
Entries must be fish you personally and lawfully caught during the Event window, inside the Event boundary, photographed through the app, and measured honestly. Scoring, measurement, eligibility, tie-break, and disqualification decisions of the tournament director are final. The director may void entries, disqualify participants, and withhold or reclaim prizes for rule violations, false or altered submissions, or unsafe, unlawful, or unsportsmanlike conduct. You are responsible for any taxes on any prize you receive, and you may be required to provide a completed IRS Form W-9 before a prize is paid. Events may be modified, postponed, or cancelled as described in the Tournament Participation Agreement.
If you host an Event as a director, your use of the tournament tools is a limited license under these Terms and any separate director agreement. You are solely responsible for your Event: its rules, any entry fees you charge, prize funding and fulfillment, permits and insurance, and compliance with all laws that apply to contests and paid-entry competitions in your jurisdiction. Platform fees paid to Fish Factor are for use of the tools, are not a share of entry fees, and are non-refundable once your Event is published, except as required by law. Directors are independent operators — nothing in these Terms creates an agency, partnership, joint venture, or employment relationship between any director and Fish Factor. We may suspend or remove any Event that violates these Terms.
Subscriptions and billing
Fish Factor offers a free tier (Fish Factor Free) and paid plans (Fish Factor Pro and Fish Factor Premium). Paid plans are billed in advance on a recurring basis (monthly or annually) through our payment processor, Stripe, and renew automatically until cancelled. Some paid plans start with a free trial: we collect a payment method at signup, and the trial converts to a paid subscription automatically when it ends unless you cancel before then. You can manage or cancel your subscription anytime from your account via the Stripe customer portal; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period (or trial), and you keep paid features until then. Except where required by law, fees are non-refundable. We may change prices or plan features with reasonable advance notice; changes apply to your next billing cycle.
Promotions and invite codes
We sometimes offer promotions, free trials, or invite links and codes that unlock special pricing. Each promotion may carry its own terms. Unless stated otherwise, codes are limited to one per account, have no cash value, can’t be combined or transferred, and may be modified or withdrawn at any time. We may reverse benefits obtained through abuse of a promotion.
Changes to the Service
Fish Factor is actively evolving. We may add, change, or retire features (including pilot and beta features, such as early tournament tools) at any time, and may suspend or discontinue all or part of the Service, without liability to you. If we permanently discontinue the paid Service, we’ll refund the prorated unused portion of anything you prepaid.
Third-party services and data
The Service relies on third parties (including Supabase, Stripe, Resend, Google, Vercel, and Esri) and on public data from NOAA, the NDBC, and the NWS. We don’t control these services and aren’t responsible for their availability or accuracy. Some information is generated by Fish Factor itself — including bite scores, tide predictions we compute from published harmonic data when live NOAA predictions are unavailable, and regulation summaries — and carries the same disclaimers. Forecast data may be delayed, incomplete, or unavailable.
Disclaimer of warranties
The Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that forecasts, scores, tide predictions, or regulation summaries will be accurate, that fish will be present, or that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free.
Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Fish Factor, IndigeFish Fishing Co., and their owners and operators will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss arising from your use of (or inability to use) the Service, including any reliance on its forecasts, any injury, loss, or damage occurring during fishing or related activity, or any dispute between a tournament director and a participant. Our total liability for any claim will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or USD $50.
Indemnification
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Fish Factor, IndigeFish Fishing Co., and their owners and operators from claims and expenses arising out of your use of the Service, Your Content, any Event you enter or host, or your violation of these Terms or any law.
Termination
You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate access if you violate these Terms or to protect the Service. Provisions that by their nature should survive (such as disclaimers, liability limits, and indemnification) will survive termination.
Talk to us first
If you have a dispute with us, you agree to email indigefish@gmail.com with a short description of the problem and what you’d like us to do, and to give us 30 days to try to resolve it, before filing any claim in court. Most problems can be fixed faster than a lawsuit can be filed. This step is a required part of these Terms, but it does not waive any right you have once those 30 days have passed.
Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The exclusive venue for any dispute will be the state or federal courts located in Los Angeles County, California, and you consent to that jurisdiction and venue.
General terms
- Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, it will be enforced to the maximum extent permitted, and the remaining provisions stay in full force.
- Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and — for tournaments — the Tournament Participation Agreement and the applicable Event Rules are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service. They supersede, and you agree you are not relying on, any statement made anywhere else, including in our videos and social media posts.
- Assignment. We may assign these Terms to an affiliate or successor (for example, a business entity we form, or in connection with a merger or sale of the Service). You may not assign them without our written consent.
- No waiver. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it.
- Force majeure. We are not liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including outages of NOAA, NDBC, NWS, or other data and service providers, internet or hosting failures, weather, or government action.
- Notices. We may give you notices by email to your account address or in the app, and you consent to receiving them electronically.
Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. We’ll revise the version and “last updated” date above and, for material changes, provide additional notice. Continued use after changes means you accept them.
Contact
Questions about these Terms? Email indigefish@gmail.com.
California residents: under Civil Code § 1789.3, you may also reach the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, CA 95834, or (800) 952-5210.
See also our Privacy Policy and, for tournaments, the Tournament Participation Agreement.