This has been a pain in the side for a while when trying to map out some information. Lets take a basic example such as mapping out Trout Release sites, now since Trout are a fish.. they need a river, creek or stream then.

Lets look at the popular map sites then.

Here we have MapQuest, no water shown

LocalLive imagery, still no water shown. But a better idea where it should be

Google Maps? Not a hint of water

Ask.com and Yahoo!’s maps are also missing any signs of water. So that leaves OpenStreetMaps, are they the same as all the rest? Well, yes and no.

OpenStreetMap has water!

So now I have a reference to find the locations I need to map for fish stocking points. But is this a 100% solution? No. Lets look farther upstream.

Going upstream a few miles and the creek just stops. So it is not all the data that I would need for a project. It is missing information such as this that renders a lot of online tools almost useless.

Yes, I know I can use imagery to map the locations. But unless the imagery was taken when the leaves are off the trees, you can loose track of where the water is if there is a lot of overhang. So, that leaves other sources of data to get the information I would need, the best source I have found so far is the National Hydrology Dataset.

I guess this should be expected though, online maps are meant more for road directions and not really a hiking, fishing, hunting, off roading tool.