OutdoorIQ

Powered by 72,000+ US lakes and 293,000+ stocking events across 12 states.

OutdoorIQ MCP is a paid MCP server that exposes lake conditions, fish-stocking records, fishing-favorability scoring, and live weather to AI agents. It is built on the CastIQ dataset (the same data that powers fishing-seo.pages.dev and the CastIQ catalog APIs).

If you're building a trip-planning assistant, a fishing app, a travel concierge, or an outdoor-brand agent that needs to recommend lakes, time visits to recent stocking events, or pull a fishing report on demand, this is the data layer you wire up.

For consumer-facing AI products, OutdoorIQ replaces a ten-source ETL with one authenticated MCP endpoint — and bills predictably so you don't get a surprise S3 invoice the first weekend traffic spikes.

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Pricing

Tier	Price	Limits
Free	$0	outdooriq-dev-key-001, 50 calls/day
Pro	$14/mo	Unlimited
Pay-as-you-go	$0.01/call	No monthly minimum

Listing & checkout: https://mcpize.com/outdooriq-mcp

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Install in Claude

Live URL: https://mcp.castiq.net/mcp (Railway fallback: https://web-production-9b8950.up.railway.app/mcp)

The fastest path uses mcp-remote as a stdio→HTTP bridge:

claude mcp add outdooriq-mcp -- npx -y mcp-remote \
  https://mcp.castiq.net/mcp \
  --header "X-API-Key:outdooriq-dev-key-001"

Or configure manually:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "outdooriq-mcp": {
      "url": "https://mcp.castiq.net/mcp",
      "headers": { "X-API-Key": "outdooriq-dev-key-001" }
    }
  }
}

Anthropic MCP Registry entry: io.github.bch1212/outdooriq-mcp — listed at https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io.

Example agent prompt:

"Find top 5 trout lakes near Chicago for this weekend."

The agent calls get_nearby_lakes (lat/lng of Chicago, radius 200mi), filters for species: trout via get_top_lakes, then pulls get_fishing_report_summary for the top match.

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Tool Reference

Tool	Args	Returns
search_lakes	name?, state?, county?, min_acres?, max_acres?, limit?	List of matching lakes
get_lake_details	lake_id	Coords, acreage, depth, species, facilities
get_stocking_data	lake_id?, species?, year?, limit?	Recent stocking events
get_fishing_score	lake_id	0-100 score with bucket breakdown
get_nearby_lakes	lat, lng, radius_miles?, min_score?, limit?	Lakes near GPS, sorted by score
get_weather_for_lake	lake_id	Current + 7-day forecast (Open-Meteo)
get_top_lakes	state?, species?, limit?	Highest-scoring lakes
get_stocking_schedule	state?, species?, month?, limit?	Most-recent matching events as a planning prior
search_species	state?, season?	Actively-stocked species
get_fishing_report_summary	lake_id	Natural-language report

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Architecture

client (Claude / agent)
        │  HTTP POST /mcp  (JSON-RPC 2.0)
        ▼
   FastAPI app (server.py)
        │  X-API-Key auth + per-day rate limiter
        ▼
  Tool registry (10 tools)
        │
        ▼
  db.connection.py  ──────┐
        │ Postgres mode  │  → CastIQ Postgres (72k lakes, 293k stockings)
        │ SQLite fallback│  → bundled seed (100+ lakes, ~150 stockings)
        ▼
  tools.* (lakes, stocking, scoring, weather, reports)
        │
        ▼
  Open-Meteo (no key)

Postgres vs SQLite mode

The server picks a backend at startup:

1. If DATABASE_URL is set, it tries asyncpg.create_pool. On success → logs [OutdoorIQ] Running in Postgres mode.
2. If the pool fails (timeout, bad creds, DB down) or DATABASE_URL is unset, the server seeds an in-memory SQLite DB with 100+ real lakes and logs [OutdoorIQ] Running in SQLite fallback mode.

The server always starts, regardless of Postgres availability.

Capability	Postgres mode	SQLite fallback
Lake catalog	72,669 (12 states)	~106 (WI, MN, IL, IA, MO)
Stocking events	293,821 historical	~150 templated, recency-tuned
Species coverage	All states/species in CastIQ	Curated subset (walleye, bass, musky, trout, crappie, perch, pike, panfish, salmon, lake_trout, sauger, white_bass, sturgeon, catfish, bluegill, smallmouth_bass)
Year-over-year analysis	Yes — multi-year stockings	Limited — events are anchored relative to "now"
Stocking-schedule tool	Real historical patterns	Approximated from seed
Weather, scoring, reports	Identical	Identical

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Local development

git clone <this repo>
cd mcp-outdoors
python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Run with SQLite fallback (no DATABASE_URL needed)
python -m run

# OR run against the CastIQ Postgres
export DATABASE_URL=postgresql://vikinetic:vikinetic_dev@localhost:5444/vikinetic
python -m run

Then:

curl -s http://localhost:8080/health
curl -s -X POST http://localhost:8080/mcp \
  -H "X-API-Key: outdooriq-dev-key-001" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'

Tests

pytest -v

The test suite covers both the SQLite fallback path and the Postgres dispatch path (via a mocked asyncpg pool), plus auth, rate limits, all 10 tools, JSON-RPC initialize / list / call, and the scoring algorithm's bucket math.

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Deploy to Railway

A deploy.sh script is included at the repo root. Run it on your Mac (the Cowork sandbox can't reach Railway/Stripe/Cloudflare APIs):

./deploy.sh

It expects RAILWAY_API_TOKEN (or RAILWAY_TOKEN exported as RAILWAY_API_TOKEN), points the project at nixpacks.toml, and sets the DATABASE_URL env var if you've also provisioned the CastIQ Postgres on Railway.

Railway gotcha (already handled): Railway exec's startCommand without a shell, so $PORT doesn't expand. We use python -m run and read PORT from os.environ inside run.py.

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MCPize listing copy

OutdoorIQ MCP — the data layer for outdoor-rec AI agents. 72,000+ US lakes, 293,000+ fish-stocking events, and live weather behind one authenticated endpoint. Search lakes by name, state, or acreage; pull stocking history filtered by species and month; compute a 0-100 fishing-favorability score that bakes in recency, species diversity, lake size, and current conditions. One JSON-RPC call replaces a multi-source ETL.

Built for fishing apps, trip-planning assistants, travel concierges, and outdoor-brand agents. $14/mo Pro for unlimited use, or pay $0.01 per call. Free dev tier (50 calls/day) lets you ship a prototype before opening your wallet. Install with claude mcp add outdooriq-mcp --url https://mcp-outdoors.up.railway.app/mcp.

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License

MIT. See LICENSE.