Natural resources staff said Oct. 21 that the town will install a dedicated weather station at the hatchery, display live data on Weather Underground and the town website, and offer a push-notification subscription so fishers can receive alerts when the recreational/commercial red-flag status changes.

"We will still have the flag up just because not everybody has reliable Internet access to get to that all the time," Jeff said during the Natural Resources report. He added that the town's website can push select updates to subscribed users and that staff would circulate instructions on subscribing once the station is live.

Several commercial fishermen told the board they prefer a text-message or group-text system tied to the constable or the town website so they receive timely notice when the flag is raised or lowered. John Logan and other fishers described past incidents where temperatures dropped while crews were fishing and said a push notification would reduce the risk of accidentally fishing during a closed period or needing to discard product when the flag status changes.

Board discussion also covered catch-reporting methods. Fishermen noted most commercial reporting has moved to online systems (state SAPIIS) and requested a town-level electronic option to submit weekly or daily town catch totals rather than relying on an annual paper form. Jeff said the town will explore linking weather-station alerts to website push notifications in the interim while an app for port-level catch reporting is still under development.

Ending

Staff said the weather station aims to be installed before winter; the physical flag will remain as the official on-water signal while the town builds a subscription-based notification workflow and develops a more comprehensive app for catch reporting.