Best Fishing Spots in North Carolina

North Carolina stacks three fishing regions into one state, and they share little beyond a licence. The mountains in the west hold cold water and trout, with mapped elevations reaching 1,262 metres. The Piedmont in the middle is reservoir country, where the overwhelming majority of the state's mapped water sits: impoundments on rivers, deep enough for fish to use a full vertical range, fishing on flooded channels and timber rather than natural shorelines. The coastal plain runs down to sea level and into estuaries and sounds, licensed separately from freshwater. The whole state sits in the warm-temperate band, so nothing freezes and the year runs on heat rather than cold, with spring and autumn strongest and summer the difficult stretch. We list 1,211 waters in North Carolina, drawn from 95 counties. Most of them are reservoirs, with natural lakes making up much of the rest. The widest water listed is Lake Norman, about 48 sq miles of surface. The climate spread across these waters is 39°F to 78°F. Occurrence records are dominated by bluegill, redbreast sunfish, green sunfish and margined madtom....