Where to Fish in North Carolina

This section provides information on more than 500 publicly accessible places to fish in North Carolina. You can find information on the location of publicly accessible fishing piers, boat ramps, and canoe launches, as well as places that provide bank and wade fishing opportunities and fish attractor sites.

Fishing Access Map

A comprehensive information source for anglers looking for a place to fish. This interactive fishing access map allows you to view public fishing areas and NCWRC-managed trout waters throughout the state. Search for public sites based on the type of access (i.e. piers, boat ramps, universal access), fish species, access sites within a specific county, sites within a specific distance from a location, or by water body name.

NC Wildlife Flounder Fishing Interactive Map Tutorial

Public Mountain Trout Waters Search

Users can view all Public Mountain Trout Waters Search to locate a great new place to fish for trout in the mountains of North Carolina, learn about the rules and regulations of trout fishing, search for specific waters or regulatory classifications, select counties of interest, find driving directions, and much more. You can open a map and zoom to the selected water once you have made a list of locations or save your list as a PDF document to read when you are on the go. Public Mountain Trout Waters are displayed in colored lines that correspond to colors of existing signs conspicuously posted along waters. Tract boundaries and designated portions of streams are not precise, but are approximations of actual locations. Users should identify boundaries on the ground before fishing and refer to the trout regulations in the North Carolina Inland Fishing, Hunting & Trapping Regulations Digest to confirm regulations in effect. A significant amount of trout fishing opportunities in western North Carolina are located on private property. These landowners generously allow public access for fishing. Please respect their property.

Create and download a fishing access guide in PDF format.

Fishing Attractor Map

This interactive map contains detailed information on more than 800 fish attractor sites deployed by NCWRC in over 60 water bodies. Some of these sites are marked with buoys, many are unmarked. The map allows you to download coordinates and detailed information of the sites in GPX and CSV formats. To download fish attractor data, open the map, zoom into an area of interest, expand the menu button in the top left corner and select Export Data. Map datum used for these files is WGS84 and coordinates are in decimal degree format.

Fish Attractor Types Commonly Used by NCWRC

N.C. Stream Conditions

To assist anglers and boaters, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission has compiled a list of websites that provide information on current stream flow conditions and projected release schedules from hydro power stations.