Evidence policy

Almost everything genuinely useful about fishing sits in a gap most publishing models cannot represent. On one side there is fisheries science: peer-reviewed, narrow, and largely uninterested in whether a lure catches. On the other there is angling knowledge: enormous, detailed, tested against reality every weekend for two centuries, and almost entirely un-experimental.

A site that publishes only the first has nothing to say about fishing. A site that publishes the second as though it were the first is lying. FishingHQ publishes both and says which is which.

Scientific evidence

Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.

Authoritative guidance

Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.

Practitioner consensus

Widely and independently recommended by experienced anglers and specialist sources. This is real angling knowledge, not proof: controlled evidence for it is limited, and FishingHQ records it as convention rather than as a demonstrated effect.

Manufacturer claim

Stated by a manufacturer. Useful technical detail, and commercially sourced — treat it as the maker's own description of their product.

Anecdotal

Reported, but without independent support. Recorded because it is in circulation, not because it has been shown to hold.

Disputed

Credible sources disagree. FishingHQ records the disagreement rather than picking a side it cannot justify.

Unresolved

FishingHQ looked into this and could not settle it. The open question is recorded here rather than being papered over.

A great many experienced, independent pike anglers recommend particular lure colours in particular conditions. Controlled evidence that colour alone changes catch rates is thin, and any effect is hard to separate from contrast, silhouette, retrieve speed and how attentively an angler fishes a lure they can see.

There are three possible responses. Omit it, which throws away real angling knowledge. Present it as established, which is false. Or state the convention, state that it is convention, and say plainly that the controlled evidence is limited. FishingHQ does the third, and you can read it on the pike page.

Angling has an acute version of the false-independence problem. A tip appears in one well-read book; it is repeated in a magazine, then on forums, then across several hundred pages of search-optimised filler. Counting those pages measures reach. It does not measure evidence.

So every source record declares whether it is an original or derives from one, and a claim labelled practitioner consensus must rest on at least two DISTINCT originals. A source that restates another contributes nothing to that count, and the build fails if a consensus claim does not meet it.

Every source in this sprint is recorded as citation checked: the work exists, and it is described correctly. That is not the same as somebody having opened it and read the sentence a claim rests on, and marking them as verified would take thirty seconds and would be exactly the kind of invisible lie this product exists to avoid.

Instead, each source records what a future reader must go and confirm in it, and what to do if the passage turns out to support something narrower than the claim resting on it. That converts the gap from a silence into a work list. See the source register.