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. The NCWRC Fish Attractor Map and Coordinates are provided, as well as additional resources such as the NCWRC county trout fishing maps and a link to the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries website.
N.C. Stream Conditions: informational links on current stream flow conditions and projected release schedules from hydro power stations.
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 streams throughout the state. Search for public sites based on the type of access (i.e. piers, boat ramps, universal access, etc.), fish species, access sites within a specific county, sites within a specific distance from a location, or by water body name.
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. Users should 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.
The NCWRC, along with several cooperators, have routinely placed fish attractors in public lakes and ponds throughout North Carolina. Fish Attractor Types Commonly Used by NCWRC While many of these sites are marked with buoys, many are unmarked and can be hard to locate without GPS coordinates. The above map contains information on more than 500 fish attractor sites deployed by NCWRC in over 50 water bodies. Also, GPS coordinates for each are provided below. Map datum used for these files is WGS84 and all coordinates are formatted in decimal degrees.
Fish attractor coordinates for downloading to personal GPS devices: Excel file or GPX file (Updated April 2022)