LIVINGSTON MANOR, NY — When Adly Elewa first started fly fishing, out on the East Branch of the Delaware River, he was quickly hooked.
“The setting was amazing,” he says. “I didn’t catch anything, but I sort of fell in love with it from that point on.”
Adly has paired his newfound love for fly fishing with a background in design to create a website and an app—S.I.F.T., “Should I Fish Today” or shouldifishtoday.com—that helps other first-time anglers feel confident in getting out on the river.
Conditions
Adly and his wife moved to the area five years ago, during the COVID pandemic.
“I’d never fly-fished before,” he says. “I did some fishing—like fishing off of boats and stuff like that—and then, like, no one would shut up about fly fishing.”
He became obsessed with fly fishing after his initial trip, and started going out fishing in all conditions. Gradually, as he went fishing more, he started to notice patterns in the conditions, and to realize he had better success in fishing if he paid attention to where the river was at on the day he wanted to go.
A lot of experienced anglers have a lot of practice in reading conditions, says Adly. He says that it’s a well-known trick of the trade to keep a catch diary, keeping track of the river conditions on the days specific fish are caught, that builds pattern recognition for which patterns will deliver which fish.
Anglers get information about the river firsthand from websites like the U.S. Geological Survey, which provides updates on facts like river flow and water temperature. However, Adly says, he found the websites lacking when he tried to use them first hand.
“That was cool, but it’s, like, very retro. It’s like a Windows 95-looking-ass interface,” he says.

The app
Should I Fish Today started life as a gag website just for Adly and his friends. The original concept was to create a website just for the Beaverkill that compiled stream data and spat out an answer to the eponymous question, with three options for a response: yes, no and maybe.
After the idea got planted, it spiraled, Adly says; he wanted to see what all could be compiled and presented.
“There’s so many websites out there that just give you that raw data, but I wanted to make something that interpreted both weather and river, and think like an angler, and think, like, how someone who’s been fishing their whole life would look at a raw number like 300 cfs [cubic feet per second, a measurement of river flow] on the Beaverkill and be like, ‘Yeah, that’s a good day to go fishing,” he says.
The app currently has a dashboard which takes in basic information like flow and water temperature, as well as more advanced info such as wind conditions and the hatching calendars for different types of insects. The app compiles that information and presents a score out of 100, rating the day’s conditions for their fishing favorability.
It also has a high-tech version of a catch diary, allowing anglers to upload their photos and have them tagged with the conditions present at the time and the location where the photo was taken.
“What’s great is I’m an angler and I use it, so really, I built something that I want to use,” says Adly. “So if ever it shows me something that I don’t agree with, I’m always tweaking and improving [it] because I’m like, ‘Well, it’s a tool for myself more than anything.’”
Starting out
The app presents a lot of advanced angling information in an intuitive package. Adly says beginner anglers have found it a less intimidating way to start building the muscle memory needed to know river conditions firsthand.
But for anglers who are just getting their feet wet?
“I almost would say, don’t even worry about conditions when you first start,” says Adly. “Just go out there. Because you know you’re not going to catch anything—you’re not.” It’s the form on one’s cast that needs to be worked on before an angler stands any chance of catching a fish, and that’s something that can be worked on regardless of the conditions.
“Catching that first fish is really always the thing that keeps you with the hobby,” he sais. “And this app makes it more likely that you’re going to catch that first fish.”