How Ghost Town works
How evidence gets in, how it is kept honest, and how uncertainty is expressed rather than hidden.
This page describes method. For what Ghost Town Intelligence is, and which capabilities are live versus in development, see Ghost Town Intelligence. For the kinds of sources it reads, see data sources.
1. Evidence in
Ghost Town reads what is already published about a water: fishing reports from fly shops, guides and clubs; notices from the agencies that manage the fishery; and environmental measurements such as flow, water temperature, snowpack and weather. Each item is recorded against the water, the place and the date it actually refers to — not the date Ghost Town happened to read it.
2. Geography kept at the level the source used
A report about a specific stretch is not silently promoted into a claim about the whole river, and a regional outlook is not narrowed into a claim about one pool. Evidence is held at the geographic level the source actually reported, and that level travels with it.
3. Observation separated from inference
What a source stated is kept distinct from what Ghost Town concluded. A hatch that a shop reported is an observation. A hatch that Ghost Town expects because of the season and prior years is an inference, and is presented as one.
4. Historical record, not just the latest post
Reports and measurements are retained over time, so a season can be compared against previous ones. This is what lets Ghost Town answer questions about a trip window months out, when no current report for that window exists yet.
5. Confidence, expressed rather than implied
Answers carry a confidence value and the reasoning behind it. Low confidence is shown as low confidence. Where Ghost Town has no data, it says so instead of filling the gap — an empty result is a real answer and is treated as one.
6. Corrections
Corrections are applied at the evidence layer, so the fix propagates everywhere that evidence was used, rather than being patched into one page of copy. If you find something wrong, please get in touch.
What Ghost Town does not do
- Does not claim to have personally fished or field-verified any water.
- Does not present illustrative or demo content as live intelligence — demo content is labelled on the page.
- Does not generate a recommendation it cannot attribute to evidence.
- Does not let commercial relationships influence intelligence — see the affiliate disclosure.