Scott Kane, Founder, Developer, Fisherman

Founder, Developer

Scott Kane founded and developed Getfished. More than a decade of working with fishing information, forecasts and reports eventually led him to build both the website and the software that supports it.

Scott has decades of software development experience. Working as for companies like National Semiconductor, Nashua, ICL and Fujitsu. As well as many years of experience as a programming consultant. For Getfished, he chose tools around one main requirement: the site had to be fast for visitors, even if that meant making the development and data-processing side more complicated.

He began programming with low-level code and direct decimal-to-hex work before moving through C, dBase, Clipper, Turbo Pascal and Delphi. Over the years, he has also worked extensively with PHP and WordPress, along with C#, Go, JavaScript and other web technologies.

Rather than relying on a conventional CMS, despite extensive experience with tools like WordPress and Joomla, Scott developed the software and data-processing tools behind Getfished. These collect, normalise, and combine fishing reports, forecasts, tides, solunar information, and other environmental data before publishing it to the site, avoiding the bottlenecks CMS systems regularly face.

Fishing vs Programming = Getfished

When he goes fishing, Scott likes to keep things simple. He uses pre-tied rigs, bait and lures, and often prepares everything before leaving home.

Software development turned out to be almost the opposite.

For Getfished, shortcuts often created more problems than they solved. The result is a system designed to do more work behind the scenes so visitors don’t have to wait.

Getfished regularly pulls information from SQLite databases and APIs, processes and analyses that data, and then rebuilds the parts of the site that need updating. Forecast, tide and solunar information can be refreshed throughout the day while the public pages remain fast and largely static.

It took more than a year of steady development using Pascal, C, Go and SQLite to build the core system. The public site is generated with Hugo, a fast static site generator written in Go.

The extensive fishing reports database was collated over many years from sources across Australia and through direct submissions to the earlier Getfished website. It continues to grow regularly with fresh reports.

Moon Up Moon Down

The book Moon Up Moon Down by John Alden Knight has had a major influence on modern fishing, although Scott thinks that influence is sometimes overstated.

It is an interesting and important book, but Getfished deliberately tries to keep solunar theory in perspective.

Solunar factors are not the only things that affect fishing. Some websites present them as a “magic formula” or the “secret you are missing.” They are neither. You can catch fish without consulting a solunar table.

That does not mean solunar information is useless. Scott sees it as one part of a much bigger picture that also includes tides, weather, water temperature, food availability and other environmental conditions.

That is why Getfished presents solunar information alongside other fishing conditions rather than treating it as the main event.

Getfished does not promise that following a forecast will make you catch more fish. Instead, it shows a range of factors that may influence fishing and leaves the final judgement to the angler.

Even fishers who place little or no faith in solunar theory still need to understand the moon because of its relationship with the tides. That alone makes it worth understanding.

Solunar and Forecast Influence

Scott started reading books about fishing conditions and feeding behaviour as a teenager.

Over time, both reading and experience showed him there is no golden rule. Sometimes the conditions line up almost exactly as the experts say they should, and the fishing is still ordinary. On other days, the supposedly poor conditions produce fish.

Fish live in an environment, and many things can affect their behaviour. Food availability, water temperature, dredging, weather, water movement, and local conditions can all matter, along with tides and the moon.

Fishing is also full of debate. Anglers argue about hook size, line colour, braid versus mono, lure choice, bait presentation and almost everything else. Some ideas are well supported. Others are based mostly on experience, tradition or educated guesswork.

Tides and lunar cycles appear to influence fish feeding behaviour at times, but they do not act in isolation.

Some books, videos and websites make the moon or tides sound like the dominant factor in fishing. Scott does not believe the evidence supports that view. They can be useful indicators, but they are only part of the conditions an angler may want to consider.

Community Involvement

Scott has served as President of the Greensborough RSL Angling Club since January 2025. The club is part of the Greensborough RSL Club.

He also donates platelets to the Red Cross blood bank and has volunteered in several community roles. These have included serving as an “Independent Person” attending police interviews involving children without a parent or guardian present.

Scott is married and has two adult daughters in Melbourne, Australia.