The full catalog: 989 lakes, rivers and coastal spots, each with a fresh daily report. Filter by type, region or the fishing that defines it.
989 waters
Abiquiu Lake on the Rio Chama: a Corps of Engineers reservoir the Corps calls excellent at times for walleye, smallmouth and trout.
A remote Bill Williams River reservoir 37 miles north of Wenden, where Arizona State Parks runs the ramps and the bass and crappie fishing usually peaks February through July.
The Allegheny River in Pennsylvania: PFBC trout water below Kinzua Dam and a river where PFBC says muskellunge, smallmouth bass and walleye dominate.
Alum Creek Lake north of Columbus: bass, crappie, muskie and saugeye in a Corps reservoir split between open water and no-wake coves.
American Falls Reservoir: a Reclamation reservoir on the Snake River where Idaho Fish and Game stocks rainbow trout, now recovering from a deep drawdown.
The Lower American River: a 29-mile parkway river through Sacramento with hatchery salmon and steelhead from Nimbus and a spring shad run.
Anderson Ranch Reservoir: a 4,607-acre Reclamation lake on the South Fork Boise that IDFG manages mainly for kokanee.
Androscoggin River: from Errol Dam to the Maine line, a New Hampshire river stocked with brook, brown and rainbow trout.
Angostura Reservoir: a 1949 Bureau of Reclamation lake on the Cheyenne River near Hot Springs, stocked each year with walleye fry.
South Park's trophy factory: shallow, fertile and famous for fast-growing giants.
The Salt River reservoir behind Horse Mesa Dam in the Tonto National Forest, with bass, walleye, yellow bass and trout, reached by the Apache Trail.
Apalachicola Bay: a river-fed Panhandle estuary where red drum and spotted seatrout feed over grass, marsh and oyster reef.
Arkabutla Lake: a north Mississippi flood-control reservoir held low for dam repairs, with crappie rules of its own.
The upper Arkansas: 152 miles of river in CPW's Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area, 102 of them Gold Medal water, mostly wild brown trout.
Surf fishing on Assateague Island's Maryland beaches: flounder, kingfish, drum, striped bass and bluefish, with an over-sand vehicle zone by permit.
The Atchafalaya Basin: the river swamp below Simmesport where Louisiana set new bass and crappie limits for the lower basin on August 1, 2026.
The Au Sable below Grayling: nine miles of flies-only, no-kill water from Burton's Landing to Wakeley Bridge, on the river where Trout Unlimited was founded in 1959.
Denver's clear suburban trophy pond: big trout, big walleye and a no-gas-motor calm.
The Ausable near Au Sable Forks, below the West Branch reaches that DEC manages with catch-and-release water between the Flume and Monument Falls.
Badin Lake: a 5,350-acre Yadkin River reservoir beside the Uwharrie National Forest, surveyed by NCWRC for crappie, largemouth and striped bass.
The trophy trout mother church: hypersaline water, ancient serpulid rocks and the biggest speckled trout in Texas swimming among them.
A 4,755-acre Baker River reservoir northeast of Concrete, where trapped-and-hauled sockeye support a summer fishery set each year by WDFW.
Bankhead Lake on the Black Warrior: 9,200 acres of largemouth and spotted bass, with hybrids and trout in the Smith Lake tailwater.
Banks Lake: a 27-mile reservoir in the Grand Coulee where WDFW names smallmouth and walleye the most popular catches.
Connecticut's largest natural lake: 947 acres in Litchfield and Morris, managed by DEEP as a northern pike lake with bass, perch and panfish.
Barataria Bay: a Louisiana estuary behind Grand Isle where state law caps redfish at 4 a day between 18 and 27 inches.
Bardwell Lake: a Corps of Engineers reservoir on Waxahachie Creek near Ennis, stocked with hybrid striped bass and managed under statewide rules.
The inlet that built Jersey surf culture: Old Barney's rocks, treacherous shoals, and the bay-to-ocean exchange that feeds LBI's whole fishery.
A 9,674-acre lake in south-central Kentucky where a walleye restoration slot, 15-inch bass minimums and a 10-inch crappie minimum apply.
The Verde's desert basin: saguaro-framed bass water an hour from Phoenix, with spring wildflower banks and a flathead night culture.
The hardest wild trout river in New England: the Battenkill hides big, educated browns and brookies in gin-clear Vermont water.
The northernmost lake on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway: about 6,700 acres in Tishomingo and Prentiss counties, managed by MDWFP for black bass, crappie, bream and catfish.
Bear Creek: a Jefferson County foothills stream below Evergreen Lake, where CPW allows only flies and lures and requires rainbow trout to be released.
Bear Lake: aqua-blue water on the Utah-Idaho line, home to three fish found nowhere else and a midwinter cisco dipnet fishery.
The first White River lake: striper mornings, spotted bass depths and Ozark clarity near Bentonville.
Montana's big-brown conveyor: a brushy tailwater ribbon below Clark Canyon where 20-inch fish are the average, not the story.
The best-known of the Catskill trout rivers: brown trout, classic mayfly hatches and two year-round catch-and-release stretches below Roscoe.
Orman Dam water: Belle Fourche Reservoir holds walleye, pike and perch on the northern plains.
Belton Lake: a 12,385-acre Corps reservoir on the Leon River with steep, rocky shores, where TPWD has stocked hybrid striped bass since 1977 and smallmouth since 1978.
A Pocono foothills reservoir: Beltzville holds trout, walleye and bass in clear water off the Northeast Extension.
Benbrook Lake: a 3,635-acre Corps reservoir on the Clear Fork of the Trinity southwest of Fort Worth, stocked with hybrid striped bass and low in October 2026.
Bennett Spring State Park: a spring branch near Lebanon, Missouri, stocked with trout every day from March 1 through October 31.
A 3,590-acre Corps of Engineers flood-control lake on the Mahoning River, which the Corps says is known for walleye and is one of the few lakes in the area where walleye reproduce naturally.
The Betsie in Benzie County: a Lake Michigan tributary with a wild-run Chinook fishery, managed by the DNR around the Homestead Dam lamprey barrier.
Big Bear Lake: a 2,971-acre mountain reservoir in the San Bernardino Mountains, planted with trout by CDFW and managed by the Big Bear Municipal Water District.
The Big Black River: about 300 miles from Webster County to the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg, through rural central Mississippi.
Green Lake: 7,920 acres and 236 feet deep, with stocked lake trout, cisco and a dense smallmouth population.
The last river of the grayling: Montana's undammed freestone jewel, salmonfly June and the Wise River braids running wild since forever.
Big Lake: a 450-acre White Mountains trout lake in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests, with a 10-horsepower motor limit.
Big Manistee River: the tailwater below Tippy Dam, which the Michigan DNR calls one of the finest trout, steelhead and salmon areas in the state.
Eastern South Dakota's river: the Big Sioux runs walleye, pike, catfish and bass from Watertown country through Sioux Falls to the Missouri.
The prairie border lake: 26 miles of Minnesota-South Dakota water at the Minnesota River's source, grinding out walleye and perch the old way.
Estes Park's canyon workhorse: pocket water rainbows below Olympus Dam.
The canyon behind the famous tailwater: 70 miles of Bighorn Canyon walls hiding walleye, ling and the West's most dramatic ice fishing.
Bighorn Lake: a reservoir of more than 70 miles in Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, from Wyoming into Montana, fished for walleye, trout, perch, crappie, catfish and ling.
The tailwater that never has a bad year: 5,000 trout per mile in the first thirteen miles below Yellowtail Dam.
The Mississippi Sound's capital: barrier-island flats, the Biloxi Marsh across the water and a casino skyline over speckled-trout mornings.
The deep one of the Glacial Lakes: Waubay's risen sister, where drowned groves drop into 40 feet and the walleye run heavier than the neighbors'.
The Bitterroot: a north-flowing valley river from its East and West forks to the Clark Fork at Missoula, with FWP access sites from Darby to Florence.
Black-Clear Lake near Campti: a 13,800-acre state impoundment of cypress, tupelo and open Prairie water, best known locally for crappie.
Black River: a White Mountains trout river with stocked Apache trout on the East Fork and tribal land along its lower reaches.
Blackfoot Reservoir in southeast Idaho: a reservoir of nearly 17,000 acres that Idaho Fish and Game stocks with triploid rainbow trout and lists for cutthroat trout, rainbows and smallmouth bass.
The river that ran through it: Norman Maclean's home water, restored to wild-trout health, floating brown-and-cutthroat canyons northeast of Missoula.
Block Island in Rhode Island Sound: striped bass, bluefish and fluke under Rhode Island rules, with federal waters closed to striper fishing.
Reading’s reservoir: Blue Marsh holds bass, walleye and hybrid stripers in Berks County farmland.
Colorado's biggest lake: kokanee salmon central and lake trout that eat them.
Blue Ridge Lake: a TVA mountain reservoir in Fannin County with stocked walleye and, in Georgia DNR's words, the state's only remaining smallmouth fishery.
Blue River PFHA: a 6.25-mile state-designated trout area in Johnston County that ODWC stocks from November 1 through March 31.
Indiana's Blue River: a state-designated natural, scenic and recreational river in Harrison, Crawford and Washington counties.
The Blue River below Dillon Dam: catch-and-release trout water through Silverthorne, then a CPW Quality Water with fall kokanee from Green Mountain Reservoir.
Bluestone Lake: a 2,040-acre reservoir where the Bluestone River joins the New River, West Virginia's third-largest body of water.
A high desert trout lake: Bluewater grows tiger muskie alongside rainbows at 7,400 feet in western New Mexico.
The 80-foot-deep pass between Charlotte Harbor and the Gulf off Gasparilla Island, which Florida State Parks calls world-famous for tarpon, with its own FWC gear rule.
Sonoma's salty harbor: crab-and-salmon culture, rock cod grounds past the head and the wind-carved coast Hitchcock made famous.
Bois Brule River: 44 spring-fed miles inside the Brule River State Forest, with lake-run steelhead, salmon and browns from Lake Superior.
Bois d'Arc Lake: a 16,641-acre North Texas water-supply lake, impounded in 2021, with a 16-inch maximum length limit on largemouth bass.
Idaho's urban ribbon: wild trout and whitefish through downtown Boise, steelhead trucked in each fall, and a greenbelt that makes it all walkable.
Boone Lake: a 4,520-acre TVA reservoir on the South Fork Holston and Watauga, back at normal levels since TVA finished its dam repair in 2022, with bass, stocked stripers, hybrids and blue catfish.
The Absaroka jewel: a boulder-strewn freestone falling out of the wilderness to the Yellowstone, thick with wild browns and rainbows.
Boyd Lake: a 1,700-acre state park reservoir in Loveland, closed to boating for the rest of 2026 because of low water.
Wind River country: Boysen’s wind-swept water holds walleye, and the canyon below it holds trout worth the drive.
An 1,800-acre lake northwest of Lincoln where crappie carry a 10-inch minimum and wipers, striped bass, white bass and flatheads go back.
Brandywine Creek: a Piedmont stream through Brandywine Creek State Park toward Wilmington, where Delaware stocks trout in two small tributaries rather than the main stem.
Braunig Lake: a CPS Energy cooling reservoir southeast of San Antonio where stocked red drum draw most of the fishing.
The Brazos near Glen Rose: a warmwater river under Texas statewide limits, where the public may fish and camp on the bed of a navigable stream.
The Broad River near Carlisle: the main stem of South Carolina's third-largest river basin, flowing through the Piedmont from North Carolina to Columbia.
A tidal Delaware Bay river from Milton to Roosevelt Inlet, ranked among Delaware's three most-fished rivers in DNREC's 2018 survey.
Broken Bow Lake: a 14,200-acre Corps reservoir in McCurtain County's Ouachita foothills, with Oklahoma's year-round Lower Mountain Fork trout area below the dam.
Indiana’s clear-water anomaly: Brookville hides walleye, smallmouth and true striped bass in Whitewater Valley hill country.
Snake River crappie water: Brownlee Reservoir stretches more than fifty miles along the Idaho–Oregon line.
Ohio's old canal lake, rebuilt and re-stocked: shallow waters of saugeye, slab crappie and the state's proudest comeback story.
America’s first national river: the Buffalo runs smallmouth and bluffs through the Arkansas Ozarks.
Deep, clear and quiet: Bull Shoals hides 45,000 acres of Ozark bass water behind one of the South’s great trout tailwaters.
California’s record spotted bass water: New Bullards Bar produced the state record spotted/Alabama bass, 11 pounds 5 ounces, in 2022.
Southeastern Massachusetts’ bay: Buzzards holds stripers, blues and tautog on rocky bottom.
Colorado's only federally designated Wild and Scenic River, flowing from Rocky Mountain National Park through the Poudre Canyon toward Greeley.
The cypress cathedral: Spanish moss, ancient trees and bass fishing inside a painting.
A deep Corps of Engineers lake near Waynesville where Ohio has stocked muskellunge since 1998 and the spillway is open to fossil collecting by free permit.
Cagles Mill Lake: Indiana's first flood-control reservoir, a 1,400-acre Corps lake at Lieber SRA known to IDNR for walleye, white bass, channel catfish and white crappie.
Alabama's longest free-flowing river, with 135 fish species and the largest known stand of Cahaba lilies at its wildlife refuge.
Calamus Reservoir: a Bureau of Reclamation irrigation lake in the Nebraska Sandhills near Burwell, managed as a state recreation area, with walleye in spring and white bass, wipers and catfish as summer goes on.
Calaveras Lake: CPS Energy's power-plant cooling reservoir near San Antonio, where TPWD stocks red drum every year.
Calcasieu Lake behind Calcasieu Pass: oyster reefs, speckled trout and redfish, with Louisiana's flounder closure each fall.
The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta: over 1,000 miles of navigable waterways where CDFW biologists collect trophy largemouth and striped bass gather to spawn each spring.
Canandaigua Lake: the fourth-largest Finger Lake, about 10,560 acres, with stocked lake and brown trout and wild rainbows from Naples Creek.
Connecticut's big water: a 1920s engineered lake where two-story fishing means smallmouth on the rockpiles and browns in the cold band.
The Caney Fork below Center Hill Dam: a stocked tailwater that TWRA manages under special trout limits.
Louisiana's trophy vault: the little lake that rewrote the state record book, where grass beds still grow double-digit legends.
Canyon Ferry Reservoir near Helena: 33,500 acres where FWP limits walleye to 10 a day and brown trout go back.
An 8,308-acre Corps reservoir on the Guadalupe with stocked striped bass, white bass and catfish, and a winter trout tailrace below the dam.
The Big Ditch: seven miles of man-made rip where the entire striper migration squeezes past a bike path, twice a day, at running-tide speed.
North Carolina’s working river: the Cape Fear runs catfish, stripers and shad from Fayetteville to the sea.
The surf-fishing capital of the Atlantic: Diamond Shoals, drum runs and the beach where casting records are set.
Cape May: New Jersey's southern tip between Delaware Bay and the Atlantic, where state rules change at the bay line.
Carson Pass gold: a high-Sierra roadside lake of mackinaw mornings, brookie evenings and ice-out weeks that reward the drive.
Illinois' biggest lake: sailboat wind, white bass waves and a sauger tailwater.
Cape Fear's beach town: a storied fishing pier, the Carolina Beach Inlet, and king mackerel water within sight of the sand.
The East Fork out of the Sierra: the Carson runs stocked and wild trout into the Nevada desert.
Carters Lake: Georgia's deepest reservoir, a 3,220-acre Corps lake on the Coosawattee River known for Alabama bass, stripers and walleye.
Lake Cascade on the North Fork Payette: big yellow perch, stocked rainbow trout and coho, and one of Idaho's most popular ice fisheries.
Casco Bay: Maine's island-filled bay between Cape Elizabeth and Phippsburg, with Portland piers and ramps and a 28-31-inch striped bass slot.
Cass Lake: the largest lake of the Cass Lake Chain in the Chippewa National Forest, fished for walleye, northern pike, perch and muskie.
Castaic Lake: a State Water Project reservoir north of Santa Clarita that CDFW named one of California's five trophy black bass waters in 1994.
Castle Rock Lake: a 13,955-acre Wisconsin River flowage below Petenwell, with walleye, panfish and Buckhorn State Park's peninsula on its shore.
Steelhead Alley's crown: Zoar Valley's wilderness gorge feeding Lake Erie chrome through the Cattaraugus' long, moody miles.
A 32-acre trout reservoir in Cave Lake State Park near Ely, stocked with rainbows and holding wild brown trout.
Muskie water in the Daniel Boone National Forest: Cave Run Lake carries a 40-inch muskellunge minimum and 22 listed access sites.
Cayuga Lake: a 38-mile Finger Lake with a weedy warmwater north end and a deep trout and salmon basin.
A Bureau of Reclamation reservoir on the Smoky Hill River in western Kansas, managed for recreation by KDWP, with walleye, white bass, wipers, crappie and channel catfish.
Cedar Creek Reservoir: 32,623 acres west of Athens where TPWD rates catfish and white and hybrid striped bass excellent and hybrids are stocked every year.
Cedar Creek Reservoir: a 4,200-acre TVA flood-control lake west of Russellville, run for recreation by the Bear Creek Development Authority.
Cedar Lake: Carbondale's 1,750-acre water-supply reservoir with a 10-hp limit, a bass slot and one of Illinois' few striped bass fisheries.
The Cedar at Cedar Rapids, where Iowa DNR stocks walleye above and below the city and the river holds smallmouth, catfish and shovelnose sturgeon.
Center Hill Lake: an 18,220-acre Corps reservoir on the Caney Fork where TWRA manages smallmouth, walleye and stocked crappie.
East-side steelhead: the Chagrin runs 51 miles to Lake Erie at Eastlake, stocked every spring and lined with public parks.
Charles River at Waltham: a river where MassWildlife records trophy carp and catfish, under a state advisory that limits most fish to one meal every six months.
Lowcountry central: spartina marsh to the horizon, schooling winter reds in gin-clear shallows, and a harbor where three rivers argue with the sea.
Denver's backyard big water: walleye eggs for the whole state, smallmouth on the dam rocks and paddleboard armadas dodged at dawn.
The cold tailwater below Buford Dam: designated trout water from the dam to Peachtree Creek, with stocked rainbows and wild brown trout inside a national recreation area.
A National Wild and Scenic River on the Georgia–South Carolina line, with wild brown trout in its headwaters and a delayed-harvest reach above the GA/SC 28 bridge.
Chatuge Lake on the North Carolina-Georgia line: a Blue Ridge reservoir of over 7,000 acres where North Carolina allows 15 striped and hybrid bass a day and honors Georgia licenses only from a boat.
Chautauqua Lake: 13,156 acres in two basins, where New York's muskellunge culture began in 1888.
Cheat Lake: a 1,730-acre hydroelectric lake on the Cheat River near Morgantown, with its own walleye slot and yellow perch limit.
Fairbanks’ river: the Chena runs Arctic grayling and pike through interior Alaska.
East Tennessee's striper broadside: a Holston River TVA lake of bluffs and islands where winter gulls mark 30-pounders.
America's estuary at Annapolis: rockfish culture, chumming fleets and two hundred rivers' worth of fishing braided into one great bay.
Maine’s third-largest lake: Chesuncook holds brook trout and togue in the North Woods.
Cypress and bowfin east of Richmond: Chickahominy Lake holds largemouth, pickerel, crappie and blue catfish above Walkers Dam.
Tennessee's big-bass phenomenon: TVA grass, Florida genetics and 15-pounders within sight of Chattanooga.
China Lake: a 3,845-acre two-basin lake in China and Vassalboro, Maine, managed for stocked trout after salmon stocking ended in 1978.
The Chippewa Flowage in Sawyer County: 14,593 acres of muskie, walleye and panfish water, and the site of Wisconsin's record muskellunge.
The lower Chippewa: five hydropower flowages, then 61 free-flowing miles from Eau Claire to the Mississippi that WDNR says hold 70% of the state's fish species.
Choctawhatchee Bay: about 129 square miles of bay in Okaloosa and Walton counties, open to the Gulf at East Pass beside Destin.
Choke Canyon Reservoir: a 25,670-acre Frio River lake west of Three Rivers, rated excellent by TPWD for largemouth, catfish and alligator gar, and far below full pool in fall 2026.
Choptank River: an Eastern Shore tidal river where Maryland's Chesapeake striped bass rules apply below the tidal line at Greensboro.
Christina River: Wilmington's tidal river, with three DNREC boat ramps, a busy catfish fishery in state surveys and strict fish-meal advice.
The Cimarron below Eagle Nest Dam: wild brown trout water through Cimarron Canyon State Park, with a 1.4-mile catch-and-release reach.
A Bureau of Reclamation reservoir about 11 miles south of Dillon that Montana FWP stocks with rainbow trout every summer, at the head of the Beaverhead River.
The Clark Fork at Missoula: a free-flowing trout river below the site of the former Milltown Dam, with FWP access sites in and around town.
Clarks Hill (J. Strom Thurmond) Lake: the Corps' largest project east of the Mississippi, fished under a Georgia-South Carolina reciprocal agreement.
Claytor Lake: a 4,363-acre New River impoundment in Pulaski County, Virginia, known for black bass, stripers and hybrids, and protected walleye.
Clear Creek in Clear Creek Canyon Park: Jefferson County Open Space land along US 6 west of Golden, with trailheads and creek access points.
Clear Lake: California's largest natural freshwater lake, in Lake County, fished for largemouth bass, crappie, bluegill and channel catfish.
Clear Lake: a shallow 3,684-acre lake in Cerro Gordo County where Iowa DNR stocks millions of walleye fry each spring, protects walleye from 17 to 22 inches and stocks muskellunge.
Pier 60, the Seminole Street launch and the city docks of Clearwater, Pinellas County, with a NOAA tide station on Clearwater Beach.
Clearwater Lake: a Forest Service recreation area with a lakeside campground and beach just outside Paisley in the Ocala National Forest.
Idaho's big-fish highway: home of the B-run steelhead, twenty-pound ocean fish a state away from the sea.
The Clinch below Norris Dam: a cold TVA tailwater that TWRA stocks with brook, brown and rainbow trout from March through August.
Lawrence's walleye-and-crappie standby with a healthy dose of wiper.
Clinton Lake: a 4,895-acre power-station reservoir in DeWitt County with stocked walleye and hybrid striped bass under lake-specific limits.
The Clyde at Newport: landlocked salmon from Lake Memphremagog run up it in spring to feed and in fall to spawn.
A no-wake lake on the Rio Grande: Cochiti holds walleye, pike and bass in quiet water below the Jemez.
North Idaho’s big water: Coeur d’Alene holds chinook, kokanee and a northern pike population that changed the lake.
A privately run foothill lake and campground in Yuba County, where the operator plants trout every spring, including trophy-size fish.
Lees Ferry: the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam, which the National Park Service calls a world-class trout fishery.
The Columbia River at The Dalles: salmon and steelhead runs, smallmouth bass and walleye on the Oregon-Washington border.
An 8,910-acre Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway reservoir at Columbus that MDWFP manages for bass, crappie, catfish and paddlefish.
Comins Lake: a 410-acre NDOW lake south of Ely with stocked trout, largemouth bass and northern pike that must be killed when caught.
Conchas Lake: a state park reservoir northwest of Tucumcari where New Mexico Game and Fish reports walleye, white bass and both black basses.
Conneaut Creek: a 57-mile steelhead stream that rises in Pennsylvania, loops through Ashtabula County and reaches Lake Erie at Conneaut Harbor, stocked each spring by Ohio.
The Connecticut River on the New Hampshire–Vermont line: one set of bi-state rules, open all year, with fly-fishing water at Pittsburg.
Coos Bay: ODFW calls it Oregon's largest bay, with salmon seasons in the estuary and gaper and butter clam beds across the lower bay.
The Corps lake above Iowa City: crappie, catfish and stocked walleye, with a fossil gorge below the spillway.
Corpus Christi: Gulf surf on North Padre Island and, on the bay side, the hypersaline Laguna Madre of Padre Island National Seashore.
The Cottonwood River: a Flint Hills river where most banks are private and fishing access starts with permission.
Coventry Lake (Wangumbaug Lake): a 373-acre Bass Management Lake in Coventry, Connecticut, with a DEEP launch on Cross Street.
The Cowlitz below Barrier Dam: hatchery salmon and steelhead water in Lewis County, with 2026-27 rules that change at every boundary.
Cranberry River: a national forest trout stream with a 4.3-mile catch-and-release section and the fly-fishing-only Dogway Fork.
Crane Prairie Reservoir: a Reclamation reservoir on the upper Deschutes River where ODFW lists rainbow and brook trout, kokanee and largemouth bass.
The high-desert tailwater: absurd trout density in a canyon you can drive.
The Crystal River: a Roaring Fork tributary that runs past Marble and Redstone and along Colorado 133 to Carbondale.
The Current River: Ozark spring water with managed trout water below Montauk State Park and smallmouth bass downstream.
Dale Hollow: a 27,700-acre Corps reservoir on the Obey River where TWRA records the 11-lb 15-oz smallmouth of 1955 as the state and world record.
A midcoast Maine lake: Damariscotta holds salmon, bass and a famous alewife run.
Alabama's barrier anchor: the rigs' inshore edge, flounder gigging lights and a fishing rodeo island guarding Mobile Bay's mouth.
Pisgah's fly-water shrine: hatchery-supported numbers, wild-water skills and trout that inspect flies beneath the waterfall forests.
Maryland's mountain water: the state's biggest lake, wearing Alleghany seasons: walleye springs, bass summers and a genuine ice culture.
A Corps of Engineers lake south of Mount Sterling, ringed by Deer Creek State Park and Wildlife Area, where boating is unlimited horsepower and the level can move 20 feet.
Provo Canyon's blue anchor: walleye and smallmouth over clean rock, rainbow trolling lanes and Timpanogos filling the windshield.
Deerfield River: a Berkshire trout river below Fife Brook Dam with a wild brown trout majority and two catch-and-release areas.
DeGray Lake on the Caddo River: a Corps lake of about 13,400 acres with clear-water bass and a state park resort on its shore.
Delavan Lake: a 1,906-acre Walworth County lake rebuilt in a long rehabilitation, now under 18-inch limits for walleye and bass.
The bay that grows weakfish: Delaware Bay runs stripers, drum and flounder across 800 square miles of shoals.
The Upper Delaware on the New York-Pennsylvania line, which the National Park Service calls one of the finest fishing rivers in the Northeast, with public accesses from Hancock to Port Jervis.
A Corps of Engineers lake where the Black Warrior meets the Tombigbee near Demopolis, best known to ADCNR for largemouth bass, with crappie and hybrid striped bass behind.
Oregon's desert artery: native redside rainbows and a summer steelhead swing.
Destin and East Pass, billed by the local tourism office as the 'World's Luckiest Fishing Village', between Choctawhatchee Bay and the Gulf.
Detroit Lake: a nine-mile Corps reservoir on the North Santiam where ODFW stocks trout in late spring and summer and kokanee add a second limit.
Detroit River: a Great Lakes connecting water whose spring walleye runs Michigan DNR calls world-class.
Devils Lake: North Dakota's closed-basin lake, where NDGF's 2026 outlook rates walleye as doing well, white bass above average and perch rebuilding.
Diamond Lake in the southern Cascades: an ODFW-stocked rainbow fishery with catch-and-release brown and tiger trout.
Diamond Valley Lake: Metropolitan Water District's 4,500-acre drinking-water reservoir near Hemet, open year-round for boating and fishing.
Dillon Reservoir: Denver Water's largest reservoir, at 9,017 feet in Summit County, with brown trout, rainbows, kokanee and Arctic char.
Don Pedro Lake: a Tuolumne River reservoir east of Modesto with about 13,000 surface acres, three launch ramps, stocked Florida bass and CDFW trout.
Douglas Reservoir on the French Broad: TWRA calls it the best crappie reservoir in East Tennessee.
Drano Lake: the Little White Salmon River's backwater on the Columbia, where hatchery spring Chinook gather from late March through May and fall Chinook from August, under some of Washington's most detailed salmon rules.
The longest river entirely within Tennessee, which TWRA calls the most biologically diverse river in North America.
Fifty-four miles of reservoir behind a 717-foot dam: Dworshak holds Idaho’s record smallmouth, kokanee and stocked rainbow trout.
Eagle Lake: a 22,000-acre natural lake in Lassen County and the only home of the Eagle Lake rainbow trout.
A 4,700-acre Mississippi River oxbow north of Vicksburg, known for bream, crappie and fast-growing fish.
Eagle Mountain Lake: a 1932 Tarrant Regional Water District reservoir on the West Fork Trinity that produced a 16-pound ShareLunker in 2022.
Eagle Nest Lake: a state-park lake at 8,200 feet on the Enchanted Circle, stocked with trout and kokanee, where every pike caught must be kept.
The Vail Valley's freestone comeback story: browns and rainbows against I-70, best caddis water in reach of a chairlift.
A 16,070-acre boundary lake on the Maine–New Brunswick line, with stocked landlocked salmon and wild lake trout.
East Lake: a deep lake in the Newberry Volcano caldera where ODFW reports rainbow trout, brown trout and kokanee.
The shallow twin: East Okoboji is warmer, weedier and fuller of walleye and panfish than its famous neighbour.
El Capitan Reservoir: a City of San Diego water-supply lake near Lakeside, open five days a week and, for now, without a usable boat ramp.
El Dorado Lake on the Walnut River: 8,000 acres of Corps of Engineers water at the edge of the Flint Hills, with walleye and wipers under a 21-inch minimum and a state park around much of the shore.
New Mexico's big water: a desert reservoir with the state's best stripers, white bass and walleye.
The Eleven Point: one of the first eight National Wild and Scenic Rivers, with MDC Blue and White Ribbon trout water below Greer Spring and smallmouth above and below.
Eleven Mile Reservoir: 3,405 surface acres on the South Platte in Park County, where CPW lists rainbow, brown and cutthroat trout, kokanee and pike.
Elk Creek: the largest and most popular Erie County tributary, stocked with steelhead and brown trout and reached mostly over private land.
From Sutton Dam to Charleston, the Elk River holds a native muskellunge population, smallmouth bass, slot-protected walleye and stocked trout in the tailwater.
Central Kentucky's float-and-wade smallmouth creek from the Forks of Elkhorn to the Kentucky River, with a 12- to 15-inch protective slot.
Elkhorn River at Waterloo, Nebraska: a river reach with a live USGS flow gauge, where only the water, not the riverbed, belongs to the state.
The Olympic Peninsula river freed by the largest dam removal in US history, and closed to fishing inside Olympic National Park in 2026.
Enders Reservoir: a Bureau of Reclamation lake in Chase County where Nebraska Game and Parks lists walleye, wipers, white bass and pike.
Enid Lake: the Corps reservoir on the Yocona River where, MDWFP notes, the reigning world-record white crappie was caught in 1957.
The Madison's shallow reservoir: Ennis Lake's 3,692 acres hold wild rainbows and browns above Bear Trap Canyon.
The panhandle’s blackwater river: the Escambia runs bass, bream and stripers from Alabama to Pensacola Bay.
The Escanaba River: an Upper Peninsula river gauged at Cornell, where Michigan DNR stocks Bay de Noc-strain walleye.
The Catskills' wild-trout freestone: the Upper Esopus runs to Ashokan Reservoir, fed below the Portal by Schoharie water.
Evergreen Lake on Bear Creek: a small drinking-water reservoir in the Jefferson County foothills, stocked with rainbow trout and fished from shore or a hand-launched boat, sunrise to sunset.
The deep-south border lake that grows double-digit bass in brushy, fertile Rio Grande water.
Raleigh's rugged bass lake: timber, rock and tournament weights that surprise visitors.
New England's year-round tailwater: cold Riverton releases, wild-and-holdover browns past 20 inches, and hatches that never take a month off.
The Oroville tailwater: spring-run salmon, steelhead and the Central Valley's best public access.
Fern Ridge Reservoir: a 9,000-acre Corps lake on the Long Tom River west of Eugene, the Willamette Basin's largest waterbody per ODFW.
Fire Island: surf fishing on a National Seashore barrier island, from Robert Moses State Park and Democrat Point at the west end.
First Connecticut Lake: a Pittsburg lake that New Hampshire Fish and Game manages for both lake trout and landlocked salmon.
A natural, fault-formed lake at nearly 9,000 feet in the Fishlake National Forest, managed by Utah DWR for lake trout, splake, kokanee and perch.
The two-state canyon sea: record-book lake trout, kokanee clouds and the Green River's emerald tailwater pouring out the bottom.
Coventry’s lake: Flat River Reservoir holds largemouth, pickerel and panfish in western Rhode Island.
The West's largest natural lake: lake trout depths and postcard water.
The Flathead main stem below the North and Middle forks: open all year, catch-and-release for westslope cutthroat and closed to bull trout fishing.
Shoal bass water in Georgia: rocky shoals at Sprewell Bluff in Upson County, and striper and shoal bass rules farther down.
Sacramento's water-line barometer: granite-sloped bass water, landlocked kings and the drought-flood cycle written on every bank.
Fool Hollow Lake: a 150-acre lake in an Arizona State Parks recreation area at Show Low, with bass, walleye, northern pike and stocked rainbow trout.
The Ford River: an Upper Peninsula trout stream that Michigan regulates as Type 4 from Northland Truck Trail to Green Bay.
The Grand River's workhorse: Oklahoma crappie tonnage, spoonbill snagging below the dam and blue cats on every flat.
Fort Peck Lake: the first dam on the upper Missouri, with 1,500 miles of shoreline and special Montana rules for walleye, sauger, Chinook and lake trout.
The Treasure Coast's working inlet: mangrove lagoons north, offshore ledges east and the earnest fish-town rhythm the resorts forgot.
Illinois' water playground with a fishing spine: 15 connected lakes of muskie weeds, walleye holes and the Midwest's busiest summer boat traffic.
Fox Lake in the Fox Chain O'Lakes, glacial water where IDNR rates crappie, channel catfish and muskie highly and stocks millions of walleye.
Chicagoland's smallmouth spine: a dam-to-dam river reborn, where bronze thrives between bike paths and the walleye ride the tailraces.
Fremont Lake at the foot of the Wind River Range: lake, rainbow and brown trout and kokanee, with a Forest Service campground and ramp on the east shore.
Fresno Reservoir: a 1939 Reclamation lake on the Milk River west of Havre that FWP manages as a walleye fishery, stocked every year.
The wade-fisher's river: 90 canyon-and-meadow miles from Yellowstone to Three Forks, no boats allowed on the best of it.
The workingman's saltwater capital: jetties, piers, surf and bay within an hour of four million Texans.
Gardner Lake: a 529-acre lake in Salem, Montville and Bozrah under Connecticut's 16-inch bass rule.
Garrisons Lake: a DNREC fishing access area south of Smyrna that the agency counts among Delaware's five most-fished ponds.
Missouri’s crooked river: the Gasconade winds 280 miles of smallmouth and catfish through the Ozarks.
Indianapolis’ backyard lake: Geist holds bass, crappie and hybrid stripers among the docks.
Rochester’s river: the Genesee runs steelhead and salmon to Lake Ontario past three urban waterfalls.
The high mountain flat: rainbows, brookies and a legendary ice season at 6,400 feet.
Waconda Lake: Kansas’s big walleye water, where 12,000 acres of prairie reservoir grow fish and wind in equal measure.
Glendo Reservoir: a Bureau of Reclamation lake on the North Platte inside Glendo State Park, which calls it one of Wyoming's top walleye fisheries.
Vail's home creek, with a CPW Gold Medal reach from Red Sandstone Creek to the Eagle River under a flies-and-lures, two-fish, 16-inch rule.
Louisiana's only inhabited barrier island: speckled trout by the box, bull reds in the passes and the state's whole coastal soul on one sand spit.
GRDA's Neosho River reservoir in northeast Oklahoma: largemouth and spotted bass on docks and rock, crappie under a special limit, hybrids and a spring paddlefish run.
Grand Lake St. Marys: a 13,500-acre canal reservoir, finished in 1845, with eight state launch ramps and no horsepower limit.
Grand Lake Stream: fly-fishing-only water below West Grand Lake in Washington County, Maine, with brook trout, landlocked salmon and a state salmon hatchery.
Michigan's workhorse river: steelhead under Grand Rapids' bridges, salmon at the Sixth Street ladder and walleye down the lower miles.
A 102-mile State Scenic and Wild River that Ohio stocks with about 80,000 steelhead a year, under Lake Erie rules up to the State Route 535 bridge.
Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay: lake trout, chinook and smallmouth in East and West bays on either side of Old Mission Peninsula.
The canyon of October dreams: Washington's swing-water classic, where summer steelhead eat dry flies between basalt walls.
Granger Lake: a 4,009-acre Corps reservoir on the San Gabriel River where TPWD calls crappie the most popular sport fish.
Grapevine Lake: a Corps of Engineers reservoir on Denton Creek north of Grapevine, with a special black bass rule and shoreline parks run by three cities and the Corps.
Grayson Lake: a sandstone-canyon lake in eastern Kentucky with bass, crappie, catfish and stocked hybrid striped bass.
New Hampshire’s tidal estuary: Great Bay holds stripers, flounder and one of New England’s wildest shorelines.
The Hudson River-Black River Regulating District's flood-control reservoir behind Conklingville Dam, where New York's record northern pike was caught in 1940.
Green Bay: Lake Michigan's western arm, where walleye have reproduced on their own in the southern bay since stocking ended in 1984.
Green Lake at Spicer: Kandiyohi County's largest and deepest lake, about 5,400 acres and 110 feet at its deepest, with a special 3-walleye possession limit.
Utah's emerald tailwater below Flaming Gorge: 8,000 trout per mile in water so clear you fish by sight all day.
Below Fontenelle: the Green runs big Wyoming trout through sagebrush canyon country.
Kentucky’s underrated Corps lake: Green River Lake grows muskie, crappie and largemouth in 8,200 acres of quiet timber.
Greenbrier River: a 162-mile undammed river in southeastern West Virginia, with a bass slot near Ronceverte and stocked trout in Pocahontas County.
Greenwich Bay: a Warwick and East Greenwich estuary with coves, marinas and public rights-of-way to the shore.
A bi-state lake in Passaic County, New Jersey and Orange County, New York, stocked with walleye and muskellunge, where either state's license is honored.
Greers Ferry Lake: 31,500 Corps acres, a walleye record from 1982 and the Little Red River tailwater below the dam.
The 3-pound crappie factory: Grenada's stained floodwater grows the biggest slabs in America, and the world knows it every March.
Minnesota's two-story secret: a 60-foot glacial bowl stocked with lake trout, browns and the clarity to sight-fish them all.
Guadalupe River below Canyon Dam: a TPWD winter trout stocking site with special trout zones, in the home range of the Guadalupe bass.
Gulf Shores: Alabama's Gulf beachfront at Gulf State Park, whose fishing and education pier is open 24 hours.
Brainerd's flagship: the resort-country classic where Minnesota learned to fish walleye chop over gravel and muskies haunt the cabbage.
Colorado's wild artery: Gold Medal water through the Black Canyon's shadow.
Gunpowder Falls below Prettyboy Dam: a cold tailwater where Maryland DNR manages 7.2 miles for wild brown trout under catch-and-return, flies-and-lures-only rules.
Hamlin Lake: a 5,000-acre lake beside Ludington State Park where bluegill, crappie and largemouth bass dominate the catch.
New Hampshire's eighteen miles of coast, condensed: a working harbor, tide-ripped jetties, and party boats sailing to Jeffreys Ledge.
Hanalei Bay: a north-shore Kauai bay where DOBOR runs Hanalei Pier and a seasonal offshore mooring area.
Harlan County Lake: a 13,250-acre Corps reservoir on the Republican River that Nebraska's 2026 forecast names for white bass, wipers and crappie.
A NorthWestern Energy reservoir on the Madison River near West Yellowstone, with brown, rainbow and westslope cutthroat trout and Arctic grayling planted by FWP in 2022 and 2023.
The world's most studied trout stream: spring-creek flats, giant rainbows and hatches that set the standard.
Henrys Lake: a Fremont County, Idaho lake drained by the Henrys Lake Outlet to the Henrys Fork, with its own trout season, a two-trout limit and posted closed areas.
A no-wake lake at 7,167 feet: Heron holds trout and kokanee in the northern New Mexico high country.
Herrington Lake: Kentucky Utilities' 1925 hydro lake on the Dix River, 249 feet deep at the dam, with stocked hybrid striped bass, white bass, largemouth and crappie.
Michigan's glass lake: spring-fed Caribbean clarity, lake trout in the deep basins and smelt schools that write the food chain.
The Yadkin's big lake: Bassmaster history and a crappie culture generations deep.
Highland Lake: a 445-acre Winchester lake that DEEP manages as both a Trout Management Lake and a Bass Management Lake.
Kansas City's crappie campus: a timber-rich Corps lake where brush-pile culture, walleye stockings and metro convenience meet.
Hilo Bay: a Big Island harbor and two river mouths under their own state fishing rules, with a shared limit on ulua, moi and mullet.
The Hiwassee River in Polk County: Tennessee's first state scenic river, a stocked trout tailwater below Apalachia Powerhouse with a catch-and-release season from October through February.
Holter Reservoir: a 3,667-acre Missouri River lake near Wolf Creek, a year-round rainbow trout, walleye and yellow perch fishery and the source of Montana's record walleye.
Homosassa on Florida's Nature Coast: a spring-fed river and its Gulf flats in Citrus County, inside FWC's Big Bend region for redfish, seatrout and snook rules.
Columbus’ north-side reservoir: Hoover holds saugeye, hybrid stripers and crappie in city water.
A 1,900-acre Colorado-Big Thompson reservoir west of Fort Collins where CPW protects walleye as brood stock and smallmouth must reach 12 inches.
Michigan's biggest inland water: a 20,000-acre weed bowl of walleye, pike and the Tip-Up Town winter festival that defines hard-water culture.
New England's broad-shouldered trout river: the Housatonic's TMA pools swing browns and smallmouth beneath covered-bridge Connecticut.
The Hump: Grays Harbor's rainforest river, where winter kings and chrome steelhead reward those who learn its moody tides.
Huntington Creek: a canyon stream below Electric Lake in Emery County, with a fly-only Right Fork and an artificial-only Left Fork.
The Huron River at Milan: a short Lake Erie tributary that ODNR says gets runs of stray steelhead, with Erie MetroParks land upstream and a free state-built ramp near the mouth.
Icicle Creek, the Icicle River in WDFW's rules: Leavenworth's hatchery creek, closed below the irrigation footbridge except for WDFW emergency salmon seasons.
Oklahoma's Scenic River above Tenkiller, with smallmouth on gravel and a 7.75-mile trout tailwater below the dam.
Ohio's saugeye capital: a canal-era reservoir whose stocked hybrids, game-day perch and shoreline culture punch far above its depth chart.
Indian River Inlet: the jettied channel joining Delaware's Rehoboth and Indian River bays to the Atlantic inside Delaware Seashore State Park.
A small pass-through lake on the Colorado River between Buchanan and LBJ, with clear water, rocky banks and a state park along its east shore.
Islamorada: the Upper Keys 'Village of Islands', with FWC-listed fishing bridges and public ramps along US 1 between Florida Bay and the Atlantic.
Jackson Lake: Grand Teton National Park's largest lake, a natural lake raised by a dam on the Snake River, fished under Wyoming licences and park limits for cutthroat and lake trout.
The Jackson River below Gathright Dam: a wild trout tailwater with 18 miles of navigable water to Covington and two reaches where riverfront owners have won trespass cases.
Jacksonville and Mayport: saltwater fishing under Florida's 2026 rules, with live tides from NOAA's Mayport (Bar Pilots Dock) station.
Virginia's fall line legend: trophy blue cats in the tidal river, smallmouth above Richmond and urban class-IV rapids splitting the two worlds.
A James River impoundment: Jamestown Reservoir holds walleye, pike and perch in central North Dakota.
The forgotten fork: brown-trout water the crowds drive past, where the Big Hole and Beaverhead marry and float traffic disappears.
Joe Pool Lake: a 6,469-acre Corps lake in the southern Metroplex with timber left standing in its upper arms and a slot limit on largemouth.
John Martin Reservoir: a Corps reservoir on the plains of southeastern Colorado, with a state park, Lake Hasty below the dam and low water in 2026.
The Triangle's bass factory: fertile Piedmont water with a big-fish reputation.
Park City's deep neighbor: a Provo River reservoir of brown-trout ambush, smallmouth banks and perch schools under paddleboard traffic.
The lower Juniata through Perry and Juniata counties: bass are catch-and-release all year below Port Royal, with PFBC ramps every few miles to the Susquehanna.
A 25,760-acre lake entirely inside Voyageurs National Park, fished under Minnesota's 18–26-inch protected walleye slot.
Kahului Harbor: Maui's primary north-shore port and a state Fisheries Management Area with its own catch and gear rules.
Kailua Bay: windward Oahu water off Kailua and Lanikai beaches, with two state seabird sanctuaries, Popoia and the Mokulua islets, offshore.
The Columbia's polished trib: a spring-fed steelhead river of ledgerock pools, summer runs in September light and fly-water tradition.
West Virginia’s big river: the Kanawha runs hybrid stripers, smallmouth and catfish past Kanawha Falls.
Kaneohe Bay: Oahu's windward bay, with a no-take refuge around Coconut Island and a regulated fishing wharf at Heeia Kea.
Northeastern Illinois' Kankakee: smallmouth under a protected slot from Kankakee Dam to Wilmington, and 11 miles of state park.
The Kansas City District's first reservoir: a Smoky Hill River lake in Ellsworth County where saugeye, white bass and channel catfish are the main targets.
The Kenai’s quieter neighbor: the Kasilof runs kings and sockeye without the combat crowds.
Kaunakakai: Molokai's south shore harbor town, facing what USGS calls the longest continuous fringing reef in the U.S.
Kaw Lake: a Corps of Engineers reservoir on the Arkansas River east of Ponca City, with blue catfish, white bass, crappie and stocked walleye.
The glacial source of the Kenai River at Cooper Landing: lake trout, Dolly Varden and rainbows, and no salmon fishing.
Alaska’s most heavily fished river, by ADF&G’s count: sockeye and coho runs and wild rainbow trout from Kenai Lake to Cook Inlet.
Kennebago Lake: a 1,700-acre, unstocked Franklin County lake with wild brook trout and landlocked salmon, fly fishing only from April through October.
Maine’s working river reborn: the Kennebec runs landlocked salmon and trout through Bingham, and stripers to the sea below.
The 160,000-acre Tennessee River giant: ledge-fishing's birthplace and a crappie destination for generations.
The Sierra's wild artery: whitewater trout canyons above Bakersfield, where the river earns its respect and gives back wild rainbows.
Kerr Lake (Buggs Island): a 50,000-acre Corps reservoir on the Virginia-North Carolina line, about 12 feet low in October 2026 with most ramps closed.
Ketchikan Creek runs through downtown Ketchikan into Thomas Basin, with salmon in the creek and kings in the surrounding salt water.
Keuka Lake: the Y-shaped Finger Lake between Penn Yan, Branchport and Hammondsport, with a lake trout population sustained by natural reproduction.
Kewalo Basin: Honolulu's small-boat harbor for commercial fishing, charter and cruise boats, where state harbor rules ban fishing from its piers, wharves and bulkheads.
Door County’s salmon conveyor: the Kewaunee stacks chinook, coho and steelhead within sight of Lake Michigan’s horizon.
Key West: a free 24-hour Atlantic pier, boat access to the Key West refuge islands and the reef, and NOAA tide station 8724557 at White Street Pier.
Keystone Lake: a Corps reservoir on the Arkansas River 15 miles west of Tulsa, noted by the Corps for striped bass, sand bass, black bass, crappie and catfish.
Kickapoo River: a 130-mile Driftless Area river whose middle reach WDNR classifies as trout water and whose lower reach holds warmwater game fish.
Delaware’s state park pond: Killens holds largemouth, crappie and easy family fishing near Felton.
A 2,750-acre lake near Murphysboro that IDNR calls one of Illinois's premier muskie lakes, with strong largemouth numbers and big crappie.
A spring-fed river through River Falls with 25 miles of Class 1 trout water, which the WDNR ranks among the densest brown trout fisheries in the country.
The Klickitat River: a Columbia tributary from Gilbert Peak to Lyle, with salmon, steelhead, a Yakama Nation dip-net fishery and 10.8 Wild and Scenic miles.
The emerald island: Kodiak's road-system rivers run silvers and reds past the bears, while the harbor fleet works halibut water measured in fathoms.
Kona: Hawaii Island's leeward coast, where deep water lies a few miles out.
The 54 miles of the Kootenai below Libby Dam, where FWP manages wild rainbow trout under a 28-inch minimum at the dam and bull trout must go back.
A clear, 90-foot Sawyer County lake where WDNR manages muskellunge, stocked walleye, smallmouth and a cold-water cisco layer.
Lady Bird Lake: Austin's 468-acre Colorado River reservoir, with a 14–21-inch protected slot on largemouth bass, a 14-pound lake record, and only paddles or small electric motors on the water.
Lahontan Reservoir: a Newlands Project irrigation lake on the Carson River inside Lahontan State Park, with walleye, wipers, white bass and catfish.
Lake Alan Henry: a City of Lubbock reservoir in a Brazos canyon, with a 15-pound lake-record largemouth and a mercury advisory on its fish.
Allatoona Lake: a Corps of Engineers reservoir on the Etowah River 30 miles from Atlanta, with 270 miles of shoreline and nearly 7 million visitors a year.
The gentleman's trout lake: Hex hatches at dusk, football rainbows and smallmouth over volcanic springs under Lassen's shadow.
The cutbow pond: a foothill family lake famous for football trout bred on-site and a spring bite that fills stringers by breakfast.
Amistad Reservoir: 64,900 acres of rocky border water near Del Rio, where largemouth bass are the most popular fish.
The two-sided lake: public-side stripers and crappie, warm-side winter bass, an hour from Richmond.
The Hill County sleeper: Aquilla's stained timber grows heavyweight largemouth for the few who work its snaggy truth.
Moraine's muskie water: western Pennsylvania's glacial park lake, electric-only calm with tigers in the cabbage and crappie in the coves.
Lake Ashtabula: the Corps reservoir behind Baldhill Dam on the Sheyenne River, where NDGF stocks walleye and rates pike and smallmouth abundant.
Lake Athens: a 1,799-acre East Texas lake under a 14-21-inch largemouth slot, known for 3- to 8-pound bass and big sunfish.
A 16,600-acre sub-impoundment of Lake Sakakawea where North Dakota rates the smallmouth bass fishery excellent and the refuge half is open only to ice fishing.
Lake Austin: the constant-level Colorado River reservoir between Lake Travis and downtown Austin, managed by statewide rules and stocked with Lone Star bass.
Lake Barkley: a 57,920-acre Corps reservoir on the Cumberland River in Kentucky and Tennessee, linked to Kentucky Lake by a navigation canal.
Lake Bastrop: a 906-acre LCRA power-plant cooling reservoir near Bastrop, where warmer water keeps bass active in winter and a 14-21-inch slot applies.
Lake Bemidji: the Mississippi River's lake at Bemidji, crossed by the state water trail between Paul Bunyan City Park and Lake Bemidji State Park.
Wine-country bass and kokanee: the two-story lake an hour from the Bay.
A cypress swamp lake in northwest Louisiana, drawn down most summers to fight giant salvinia.
The Flint River wearing a lake costume: Blackshear’s cypress and current grow south Georgia bass, crappie and hybrid stripes.
Lake Bob Sandlin: a 9,004-acre Big Cypress Creek reservoir near Mount Pleasant, stocked with Lone Star bass and blue catfish.
Lake Bomoseen: the largest lake located entirely within Vermont, with bass, pike, perch and brown trout in the Taconic slate country.
Lake Bridgeport: an 11,954-acre West Fork Trinity reservoir with largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass, and white bass, hybrids and crappie that TPWD rates excellent.
Lake Brownwood: a 6,490-acre reservoir on Pecan Bayou and Jim Ned Creek where TPWD rates white bass fishing excellent.
The deep, clear giant of the Highland Lakes: stripers in open water, whites up the Colorado.
Lake Burton: a 2,775-acre Georgia Power lake near Clayton that holds Georgia's spotted bass record.
Camanche Reservoir: an EBMUD lake on the Mokelumne where the district stocks more than 50,000 pounds of trout a year; outside-boat launching closed after Oct. 1, 2026.
The Ojai giant-maker: no-body-contact water that once yielded a 21-pound bass, still guarding trophy genetics behind quagga gates.
The sixth Great Lake: 120 miles of bays and islands where bass tournaments meet salmon streams.
Lake Charlevoix: a drowned river mouth lake joined to Lake Michigan by Round Lake and the Pine River Channel at Charlevoix.
Lake Chatuge: a 7,050-acre TVA reservoir across the Georgia–North Carolina line, where Georgia WRD stocks hybrid striped bass and walleye on a blueback herring forage base.
Lake Chelan: Washington's largest natural lake, where WDFW lists kokanee, lake trout, cutthroat and smallmouth among the catch.
The Mississippi’s abandoned bend: Chicot is Arkansas’s largest natural lake, a 20-mile oxbow full of crappie and bream.
Lake Conroe: a 20,118-acre San Jacinto River Authority reservoir north of Houston, under a 16-inch largemouth minimum, where TPWD rates bass, catfish, hybrids and bluegill excellent.
Kentucky's deep striper canyon: 100 miles of cliff-lined water and a nationally known houseboat culture.
Lake Cuyamaca near Julian: a district-run reservoir at 4,600 feet that its operator calls San Diego County's only year-round trout fishery, with a 5-trout limit you must keep.
East Texas' postcard pocket: Cypress Springs' clear coves and manicured shores hide bass quality behind the lake-house calm.
Bayou D'Arbonne Lake near Farmerville: a timbered north Louisiana lake with its own crappie rule and a state park on the shore.
A 34,300-acre pool of the Arkansas River at Russellville, where backwater bass, crappie and white bass share the water with barge traffic.
Lake Darling: the 9,600-acre heart of Upper Souris National Wildlife Refuge, fished for walleye, pike, perch and smallmouth under refuge rules.
The East Bay's stocked oasis: a canyon lake of planted trout, striped bass surprises and Bay Area crowds handled with grace.
Lake Erie’s Ohio waters: the shallowest Great Lake, walleye and yellow perch managed under lake-wide catch quotas, and island parks with public ramps.
Eufaula Lake: Oklahoma's largest reservoir at 105,500 acres, with a 20-crappie limit of its own.
Fayette County Reservoir: a 2,400-acre LCRA power-plant cooling lake east of La Grange that TPWD calls first and foremost a largemouth bass lake.
Lake Ferguson: a Mississippi River oxbow inside the levee at Greenville, managed by MDWFP for bass, crappie, bream and catfish.
A 27,264-acre Sabine River Authority reservoir near Quitman where TPWD manages largemouth bass under a 16-to-24-inch slot and stocks hundreds of thousands of fingerlings a year.
Fort Phantom Hill: a 4,213-acre City of Abilene reservoir on Elm Creek where TPWD rates blue catfish, hybrid stripers and white crappie the steadiest bites.
The Missouri's forgotten middle: 107 miles of walleye water behind Fort Randall, where the crowds thin and the smallmouth took over the rocks.
A Tippecanoe impoundment: Lake Freeman holds bass, crappie and catfish near Monticello.
The Roanoke's middle child: 20,000 dock-lined acres between Kerr and Roanoke Rapids, where grass beds grow bass and stripers ride the current.
Geneva Lake: 5,401 acres of very clear Walworth County water, 135 feet deep, where smallmouth bass are the abundant game fish.
A 28,451-acre, 32-mile Adirondack lake with naturally reproducing lake trout, annually stocked landlocked salmon and bass.
The UP's biggest inland water: walleye and jumbo perch in tannin-dark timber country, where the ice season is the social calendar.
The Brazos ribbon lake: stripers below Possum Kingdom, sandies everywhere, docks for days.
Lake Granby: a 7,250-acre Arapaho National Recreation Area reservoir that CPW lists as a Quality Water, with the highest density of lake trout in Colorado.
The Saluda's small striper lake: big-fish surprises above Murray.
The Little Missouri's clear pool: Ouachita-mountain water of walleye springs, striped nights and a trout tailwater below the dam.
Alabama's largest lake: 69,100 acres of Tennessee River milfoil, hydrilla and current from Nickajack Dam to Guntersville Dam.
Lake Hamilton: Entergy's hydro lake at Hot Springs, one of four Arkansas lakes that AGFC stocks with striped bass.
Bartlett’s Ferry (Lake Harding): a 5,850-acre Georgia Power reservoir on the Chattahoochee, with docks, hybrids and stripers, where either state’s license is honored.
Lake Harris: an Upper Ocklawaha Basin lake in Lake County, Florida, that drains to Lake Eustis through the Dead River.
A 56,000-acre Corps of Engineers reservoir on the Georgia–South Carolina line, where blueback herring feed striped bass, hybrids and spotted bass.
Lake Havasu: a 45-mile Colorado River lake behind Parker Dam, where AZGFD's record list holds a 6-lb redear and a 6-lb 4-oz smallmouth.
Oklahoma City's urban walleye lab: a bike-path reservoir where the state's gold program started and the lighthouse watches limits.
Duke Energy's 1927 Catawba River reservoir at Hickory: a heavily fished largemouth lake where invasive Alabama bass have spread since 2008.
San Diego’s big-bass water: Hodges grew a fourteen-pound reputation on Florida-strain largemouth.
Lake Hopatcong: New Jersey’s largest lake, about 2,686 acres in Morris and Sussex counties, with stocked walleye, hybrid striped bass and muskellunge.
Lake Houston: an 11,854-acre San Jacinto River reservoir northeast of Houston where TPWD calls blue catfish the dominant sport fish.
Lake Hudson: GRDA's Grand River reservoir behind Robert S. Kerr Dam in Mayes County, with a lake-specific crappie limit.
Lake Ilo: a reservoir in a national wildlife refuge near Dunn Center, North Dakota, where Game and Fish reports low water from dam problems and an unusable boat ramp.
The Kern's desert reservoir: wind-carved bass water, crappie years of legend and trout pouring in from the river's two forks.
Florida's sleeper trophy lake: shallow, wild and stuffed with heavyweight bass.
Lake Jocassee: a 7,565-acre Duke Energy reservoir, up to 351 feet deep, that holds five South Carolina state fish records.
Terminus Dam's reservoir below Sequoia: Lake Kaweah's bass, crappie, catfish and winter-planted trout.
The clear Blue Ridge cooling lake: spotted bass depth and year-round comfort water.
The chain's wild heart: Kissimmee grass to the horizon, trophy bass in the maiden cane and an evening bonnet-worm bite from another century.
Lake Lanier: a Corps of Engineers reservoir north of Atlanta, about 38,000 acres, known for Alabama (spotted) bass and stocked striped bass.
Lavon Lake: a 21,400-acre Corps reservoir northeast of Dallas that TPWD notes for crappie, catfish and white bass.
Lake LBJ: the constant-level Highland Lake on the Colorado River at Marble Falls and Kingsland, where TPWD calls the white crappie the best in the chain.
Lewisville Lake: a 29,592-acre Corps of Engineers reservoir on the Elm Fork of the Trinity where TPWD rates catfish, crappie and white bass excellent.
Lake Lillinonah: a 1,547-acre Housatonic River impoundment between the Bleachery and Shepaug dams, with bass, pike and tiger muskie on DEEP's species list.
Lake Limestone: a 12,553-acre Navasota River reservoir where TPWD says anglers find little competition, especially on weekdays.
Lake Livingston: a 90,000-acre Trinity River reservoir that TPWD rates for white bass and blue catfish.
The Treasure Valley’s off-channel giant: Lowell’s weedy flats grow double-digit largemouth minutes from Boise’s sprawl.
Lake Macbride: a 940-acre Johnson County lake that Iowa DNR calls a premier wiper fishery and the only Iowa lake with spotted bass.
Lake Marble Falls: the smallest lake in LCRA's Highland Lakes chain, a narrow pass-through reservoir at the town of Marble Falls.
Santee-Cooper's upper lake: flooded cypress, landlocked striper history and catfish of legend.
Alabama's clear-water playground: 44,000 acres of pine-and-granite islands where spotted bass school deep and stripers run the lights.
Merced Irrigation District's big reservoir on the Merced River behind New Exchequer Dam, with bass on the rocky points and trout and salmon trolled in deep water.
Lake McConaughy: Nebraska's largest reservoir, 22 miles of North Platte water behind Kingsley Dam, with walleye, wipers and smallmouth.
America's largest reservoir: stripers by the million, smallmouth on the rocks, and a fishery that thrives at any water level.
Lake Memphremagog at Newport: a border lake shared with Quebec, where both sides now allow just 2 trout or salmon a day.
Lake Mendota in Madison: 9,781 acres, ten public landings and its own size limits on walleye and northern pike.
The Panhandle's canyon oasis: a Canadian River lake back from the dead, with walleye, smallmouth and sailing-club wind.
Lake Merwin on the North Fork Lewis: WDFW says kokanee are the main target, with tiger muskie, planted in 1995, also popular.
A Turtle Mountain lake on the Canadian line, with walleye stocked every year, northern pike and bluegill.
Chicago's Lake Michigan front: 22 miles of shoreline and nine harbors where the Park District lists salmon, trout, perch and bass.
The Twin Cities' trophy maze: 14,000 acres of bays and channels where metro muskies, bragging-size bass and ice culture share the docks.
Lake Mohave between Hoover and Davis dams: stocked rainbows near Willow Beach and, from 2026, no limit on striped bass.
Indiana's big water: quiet coves, hybrid stripers and Hoosier National Forest shorelines.
A 2,530-acre lake behind Gathright Dam with 43 miles of undeveloped shoreline, where Virginia stocks brown and McConaughy rainbow trout fingerlings every year.
Lake Moultrie: the 60,400-acre lower lake of the Santee Cooper system in Berkeley County, owned and managed by Santee Cooper.
South Carolina's 50,000-acre jewel on the Saluda: stripers with a landlocked pedigree and summer cane-pile crappie.
The lake inside Lake Murray State Park near Ardmore, where ODWC stocks Florida-strain largemouth bass every year and Oklahoma State Parks runs the ramps and marina.
An 18-mile Monterey County Water Resources Agency reservoir in northern San Luis Obispo County, home to white bass planted in 1965 and under their own California rule.
Nacogdoches Lake on Loco Bayou: a hydrilla-and-lotus bass lake where only largemouth of 16 inches or less may be kept.
Lake Nasworthy: San Angelo's 1,380-acre city lake, held near a constant level by releases from Twin Buttes Reservoir.
Lake Nockamixon: a 1,450-acre Bucks County state park lake on PFBC's Big Bass Program list, with walleye, muskellunge and striped bass hybrids.
Charlotte's inland sea: 32,000 acres of docks, spots and hybrid surface blitzes.
Nottely Lake: a 4,180-acre TVA reservoir near Blairsville where Georgia DNR rates spotted bass, largemouth, stripers and crappie as the best bets.
Lake O' the Pines: a Corps reservoir on Big Cypress Creek where TPWD lists chain pickerel alongside bass, crappie and catfish.
South Dakota's 231-mile walleye highway, with salmon below the thermocline.
Lake Oconee: Georgia Power's 19,000-acre reservoir above Wallace Dam, known for spring crappie and a growing catfish fishery.
Missouri's 54,000-acre serpent: 1,150 miles of dock-lined shoreline and a crappie-and-bass factory.
Lake of the Woods: a Canada-Minnesota border water with its own walleye, sauger and northern pike limits, and two Minnesota state-record fish.
Lake Ogallala: a 320-acre no-wake lake on the east side of Kingsley Dam, known for fast-growing rainbow trout.
Lake Okeechobee: 730 square miles of water ringed by the Herbert Hoover Dike, Florida's largest lake by the Corps' count.
Iowa’s blue-water lake: Lake Okoboji (West Okoboji) is spring-fed, 136 feet deep and full of walleye, smallmouth and bluegill.
Lake Onalaska, Pool 7 of the Mississippi above La Crosse: a backwater of about 9,400 acres where Wisconsin DNR's last survey found largemouth bass, bluegill and yellow perch the most abundant game fish.
Lake Ontario, New York shore: chinook, coho, browns, steelhead and lake trout, stocked and managed by DEC from the Niagara Bar to the Salmon River.
Lake Oroville: the State Water Project reservoir behind the nation's tallest dam, where DWR says spotted bass are the most common catch.
Arkansas' island wilderness lake: 40,000 clear acres, no shoreline development, stripers and giant walleye.
Lake Palestine: a 25,560-acre Neches River reservoir southwest of Tyler that TPWD rates excellent for catfish and for white and hybrid striped bass.
Idaho's inland sea: 1,150 feet deep, home of monster rainbows and resurgent kokanee.
Lake Pepin: a natural 29,295-acre lake on the Mississippi River, formed behind the Chippewa River's delta and fished under Minnesota-Wisconsin border-water rules.
The southern end of the State Water Project: a Riverside County reservoir with largemouth and Alabama spotted bass, big bluegill and redear, and winter trout.
Lake Piru: United Water Conservation District's 1955 reservoir on Piru Creek in Ventura County, with mandatory quagga mussel boat inspections.
Phoenix's deep blue playground: stripers, white bass schools and desert-clear water.
Eastern South Dakota’s big natural lake: Poinsett is managed for walleye and yellow perch, with smallmouth, pike and white bass alongside.
Lake Pontchartrain: a shallow, brackish estuary of almost 630 square miles north of New Orleans, fished for speckled trout and redfish.
Lake Powell: the Glen Canyon reservoir across the Utah-Arizona line, where striped bass and walleye have no limit and record-low water has closed most launch ramps.
The Winnebago system's wild corner: Poygan's shallow rushes hold the chain's walleye waves, sturgeon lore and duck-blind mornings.
The upper Fox River's shallow lake: Puckaway holds northern pike, walleye, bluegill and yellow perch in water only a few feet deep.
A 21,671-acre City of Dallas reservoir on the East Fork of the Trinity, where hybrid striped bass and blue catfish are now the most abundant sportfish, TPWD says.
Ray Roberts Lake: a 25,600-acre Corps reservoir north of Denton with about 2,000 acres of standing timber and a 15.18-pound lake-record bass.
The Columbia River behind Grand Coulee Dam: 151 miles to the Canadian border, with net-pen rainbows, kokanee, walleye, smallmouth and white sturgeon.
Lake Russell: a 26,650-acre Corps reservoir between Hartwell and Clarks Hill with regulated shoreline development and a trophy striped bass rule.
Lake Sakakawea: the Corps' 178-mile Missouri River reservoir, where North Dakota Game and Fish reports above-average walleye numbers for 2026.
Lake Sammamish: a 4,853-acre King County lake for cutthroat, smallmouth bass and yellow perch, where kokanee are catch-and-release.
Lake Seminole: a 37,500-acre reservoir behind Jim Woodruff Dam where Georgia and Florida fishing licenses are both honored on the lower lake.
Lake Sharpe: an 80-mile Missouri River reservoir from Oahe Dam to Big Bend Dam, where walleye lead the catch and several ramps have silted in.
The walleye-and-muskie surprise in the corn belt.
The warm-water winter lake: Oconee's scrappier sibling with year-round shallow bass.
Lake Somerville: an 11,456-acre Corps lake on Yegua Creek between Houston and Austin, known to TPWD for its spring white bass run and stocked hybrid striped bass.
Wine country's warm-water vault: a no-wake maze of arms where landlocked steelhead cruise deep and the bass bite never left.
Springfield’s city lake: catfish, bluegill and largemouth in a 3,866-acre reservoir run by the city utility at the edge of the Illinois capital.
Lake St. Clair: 430 square miles and 11 feet deep on average, which Michigan's EGLE says hosts one of the largest sport fisheries in the world.
Sunapee Lake in New London, Newbury and Sunapee: a New Hampshire lake trout and salmon lake stocked with landlocked salmon every year.
Tallahassee's stump garden: an old Ochlockonee impoundment famous for crappie tonnage, live-oak shorelines and January limits.
Lake Taneycomo: the cold White River reservoir below Table Rock Dam at Branson, a trout lake that MDC stocks every month.
Lake Tawakoni: a 37,879-acre Sabine River reservoir east of Dallas, beside West Tawakoni, which the Texas Legislature named the Official Catfish Capital of Texas in 2001.
Called the “Striper Capital of the World” by the Corps of Engineers: one of the few reservoirs where striped bass reproduce naturally.
The prairie ghost lake: South Dakota's risen giant, drowned farmland turned walleye factory when the wet cycle rewrote the map.
Norman's reservoir on the Little River: saugeye, bass, crappie and catfish 13 miles east of town.
A 1,750-acre Macon-Bibb County lake where Georgia DNR names largemouth bass, crappie, catfish and stocked hybrid bass as the best bets.
Lake Tohopekaliga: the Kissimmee lake that FWC's own regulations guide calls a name 'recognized by anglers across the globe'; statewide Florida limits apply.
Lake Travis: the deep Highland Lakes reservoir on the Colorado River above Austin, with largemouth and Guadalupe bass, spring white bass runs and a small striper fishery.
Lake Tschida (Heart Butte Reservoir): a Reclamation lake on the Heart River south of Glen Ullin with walleye, pike, perch, crappie and both black basses.
Lake Tyler and Lake Tyler East: twin city reservoirs southeast of Tyler, joined by a canal and known for consistent largemouth bass.
Lake Vermilion: a 365-island St. Louis County lake under its own 20-26-inch walleye protected slot.
Lake Waco: an 8,465-acre Corps reservoir inside the city, raised seven feet in 2003, with crappie, catfish and stocked hybrid stripers.
Lake Waconia: a 3,080-acre Carver County lake with a special walleye size rule and a stocked muskellunge population.
Lake Wallenpaupack: a 5,700-acre Brookfield Renewable reservoir in Pike and Wayne counties, stocked by PFBC with walleye, striped bass and brown trout.
Lake Wanahoo: a no-wake Saunders County lake that the Lower Platte North NRD opened in 2012, with fish habitat built into its design.
Lake Waramaug: a 656-acre natural lake in Kent, Warren and Washington, Connecticut, with carry-in access at the state park and a town launch in Washington.
Lake Washington: 21,934 acres between Seattle and Bellevue with cutthroat, bass, perch and crappie, and salmon seasons only when runs allow.
A 3,000-acre Mississippi River oxbow near Glen Allan, managed by MDWFP for crappie, largemouth bass, bream and catfish.
Lake Wateree: a 13,025-acre Duke Energy reservoir on the Catawba-Wateree chain northeast of Columbia, managed by SCDNR for crappie, striped bass, largemouth and catfish.
Indiana's largest natural lake: 3,410 acres of developed shoreline near Syracuse, with bluegill, largemouth and northern pike at the core of the catch.
The striper lake of the Brazos: granite bluffs, clear water and a two-state-quality fishery an hour from the Metroplex.
A 1,653-acre, 308-foot-deep lake between Mount Pisgah and Mount Hor, and the water that produced Vermont's record lake trout.
Wisconsin's 131,939-acre lake on the Fox–Wolf system, with a three-walleye bag and a February sturgeon spearing season.
Big Winnie: the walleye factory where wind decides everything.
New Hampshire's largest lake: a designated Lake Trout and Salmon Lake where Fish and Game stocks landlocked salmon every year and lake trout are native.
Lake Winnisquam: a 4,214-acre Lakes Region lake that New Hampshire Fish and Game manages for both coldwater and warmwater fish.
The Wisconsin River impoundment above Prairie du Sac: wild walleye, sauger and smallmouth, fast-growing panfish and a September lake sturgeon season.
Lake Wissota: a man-made lake on the Chippewa River northeast of Chippewa Falls, where WDNR rates walleye abundant and muskie common.
Fort Worth's original: the 1914 city lake still schools sandies, cats and comeback bass under the Jacksboro Highway's history.
Lake Wylie on the Catawba River: a Duke Energy reservoir between Charlotte and Rock Hill, split by the North Carolina-South Carolina line, where neither state honors the other's fishing license.
Lake Zoar: a 909-acre Housatonic River impoundment between Shepaug and Stevenson dams where DEEP stocks walleye.
Laurel River Lake in the Daniel Boone National Forest: clear, deep water with walleye, smallmouth and spotted bass under KDFWR size limits.
Lay Lake: a 12,000-acre Alabama Power reservoir on the Coosa River south of Birmingham, best known for spotted and largemouth bass (ADCNR).
Minnesota's third-largest: walleye reefs, muskie legend and Chippewa National Forest wild.
The Lehigh River through Lehigh Gorge State Park: stocked approved trout water from Francis E. Walter Dam to Sandy Run, with trail access at White Haven, Rockport and Glen Onoko.
The Missouri’s shallow reservoir: Lewis and Clark Lake holds walleye and catfish between two states.
Three dams, four runs: the Lewis below Merwin delivers winter steelhead, spring kings and a fall coho stack an hour from Portland.
Alabama's deep, clear striper canyon, with spotted bass that changed the record books.
Another Baltimore watershed lake: Liberty’s clear, deep water holds bass, walleye and a serious no-motor tradition.
Northern Kentucky’s muskie river: the Licking runs toothy fish and smallmouth to the Ohio.
Little Bay de Noc: the northern arm of Green Bay at Escanaba and Gladstone, where the Michigan DNR stocks, tags and surveys walleye.
Pennsylvania’s limestone freight line: wild browns, legendary green drakes and a river that fishes big through a small valley.
Michigan's steelhead egg source: the Little Manistee weir supplies the state's winter-run strain, and no steelhead are stocked in the river.
The Greers Ferry Dam tailwater: about 30 miles of AGFC trout water with a wild brown trout population and the 1992 line-class world record brown.
Little Susitna River: a Mat-Su salmon river whose king and coho fisheries ADF&G closed in 2026 to protect weak runs.
Baltimore’s drinking water, open to anglers: Loch Raven is a 2,400-acre city reservoir with a county-run fishing center.
Wild and scenic whitewater: the Lochsa runs westslope cutthroat through the Bitterroot wilderness.
The Coosa’s spotted-bass arena: Logan Martin runs current through 15,000 acres of dock-lined water that fights above its weight.
The Logan River through Logan Canyon: Cache County trout water with special limits from Card Canyon upstream to the Idaho line.
Long Island Sound from the New York shore: a 110-mile estuary of rocky bottom and sand where blackfish, porgies, fluke, black sea bass and striped bass each follow New York's own seasons.
Los Vaqueros Reservoir: a Contra Costa Water District drinking-water lake fished from shore, a pier and rental boats.
A Sandhills river: the Loup runs clear over sand through central Nebraska, holding catfish and bass.
Lucky Peak: a Corps flood-control lake 15 minutes from Boise, stocked with kokanee and rainbow trout and drawn down every late summer.
Delaware’s biggest freshwater: Lums Pond holds bass, crappie and catfish in a state park on the C&D Canal.
Maalaea Bay: the Maui bay that holds the state's Maalaea Small Boat Harbor, with one launch ramp and DOBOR's Maui district office.
Mad River: a Humboldt County steelhead river with CDFW's Mad River Hatchery near Blue Lake and a low-flow rule tied to the Arcata gauge.
Montana's Fifty-Mile Riffle: the most fished, most loved trout river in the state, and still worth every cast.
A 3,580-acre irrigation reservoir on the Big Wood River with a gently sloping shoreline, stocked heavily by IDFG with rainbow trout.
Manasquan Reservoir in Monmouth County: a 770-acre water-supply lake open for fishing all year, stocked with hybrid striped bass, electric motors only.
Manistique River: an Upper Peninsula river whose lower 1.7 miles, below the dam in Manistique, tie it to Lake Michigan's salmon and steelhead.
Mansfield Hollow Lake: a Corps flood-control lake where the Natchaug, Fenton and Mount Hope rivers meet, managed by CT DEEP as a bass and northern pike lake.
The Flint Hills' walleye bowl: a windswept Kansas Corps lake where the hedge rows drowned and the gold learned to ride the mud lines.
Mark Twain Lake: 18,600 acres behind the Corps' Clarence Cannon Dam in northeast Missouri, fished for crappie, largemouth, white bass and big blue and flathead catfish.
An island south of Cape Cod where striped bass, bluefish, bonito and false albacore draw shore and boat anglers, and the Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby has run each fall since 1946.
The Colorado River's mouth at Matagorda: East Matagorda Bay, Matagorda Bay and the Gulf jetty within reach.
The Maumee walleye run: each spring Lake Erie walleye push upriver to spawn on the rapids between Perrysburg and Maumee.
Medina Lake: a deep Hill Country reservoir whose level rises and falls with drought, and whose ramps and fishing follow it.
The Osage cedar bank: clear-for-Kansas water with smallmouth on the riprap, crappie in planted forests and walleye off the points.
A Wisconsin-Michigan boundary river that reaches Green Bay at Marinette, with spring walleye runs, fall brown trout and a catch-and-release sturgeon season.
Meramec River: an Ozark river that runs 218 miles to the Mississippi below St. Louis, with smallmouth and Red Ribbon trout rules on its upper reaches.
New England’s working river: the Merrimack runs smallmouth, stripers and a restored shad run to the sea.
A 2,900-acre Sandhills reservoir southwest of Valentine that holds Nebraska's hook-and-line records for muskellunge and channel catfish.
Merrymeeting Lake: a deep, low-nutrient lake in New Durham that New Hampshire Fish and Game stocks and manages for lake trout and landlocked salmon.
Oregon's spring-creek cathedral: a full-grown river erupting from the ground, running gin-clear past ponderosas with wild redbands and bull trout.
Kansas' biggest lake: 16,000 acres of Republican River water famous for wipers, walleye and springtime white bass.
Minnesota's walleye legend: 132,000 acres of reefs, mud flats and the state's most storied ice fishery.
Fresno’s front-yard reservoir: Millerton’s granite banks trade spotted bass all year and shad boils all summer.
Arkansas' swamp giant: 29,000 acres of flooded timber and oxbow character, where big bass and slab crappie live among the cypress.
The Beaver bargain: a high-desert trophy pond where Utah's quality rules grow 20-inch rainbows on a fraction of Strawberry's fame.
Missisquoi River: a Lake Champlain walleye spawning river up to the Swanton Dam, with spring closures just below the dam.
Mississinewa Lake near Peru: a 3,210-acre Upper Wabash flood-control reservoir with stocked walleye, four ramps and a marina.
Mississippi River Pool 9: the navigation pool between Lock and Dam 8 at Genoa and Lock and Dam 9 at Lynxville, on the Iowa-Wisconsin line.
The Missouri below Garrison Dam: a tailrace that North Dakota Game and Fish says produces trophy trout, walleye and salmon, and a river reach with underused channel catfish.
The Craig section: Montana's trout interstate, where 5,000 fish per mile sip tricos below Holter Dam and drift boats run like commuter rail.
Mobile Bay: Alabama's big estuary, fed by the Mobile Delta and home to the jubilee that ADCNR says occurs in only two places in the world.
The canalized Mohawk: one of New York's most-fished waters, with smallmouth bass the top target and catch and release only at the Hudson end.
The Mokelumne below Camanche Dam: a hatchery river for Chinook salmon and steelhead, open to fishing in two seasonal windows.
The End: America's surf-casting mecca, where the fall run becomes a religion under the lighthouse.
A central California bay inside a national marine sanctuary, with rockfish and lingcod open April through December, a short fall salmon window in 2026 and license-free fishing from Monterey's Wharf II.
Moosehead Lake: 74,890 acres and 246 feet deep, where togue, landlocked salmon and wild brook trout share the water with smallmouth and perch.
The largest of the Rangeley Lakes: 16,300 acres of cold, deep water with wild landlocked salmon and native brook trout, held up by the dam at Upper Dam.
The Crystal Coast's port: Cape Lookout's shoals, false albacore autumns that fill fly-fishing legend and a king mackerel heritage fleet.
A 6,728-acre lake in the city of Moses Lake, where WDFW surveys find walleye and smallmouth bass in high numbers.
Mosquito Lagoon: the northern Indian River Lagoon inside Canaveral National Seashore, where red drum are catch-and-release only.
Northeast Ohio's walleye commons: a shallow causeway-split reservoir grinding out gold, crappie and the state's steadiest ice season.
Arkansas’ whitewater river: the Mulberry runs smallmouth through Ozark National Forest bluffs.
Murrells Inlet: a Georgetown County salt-marsh inlet with jetty fishing from Huntington Beach State Park and SCDNR artificial reefs a few miles offshore.
The Musconetcong: a 42.5-mile Highlands river from Lake Hopatcong to the Delaware, stocked with trout and partly designated Wild and Scenic.
The Muskegon River below Croton Dam: Michigan DNR stocks it with steelhead, Chinook salmon, walleye, brown and rainbow trout, and lists steelhead fishing from late October through June.
Sixty miles of Grand Strand surf and piers, with Lowcountry creeks hiding behind the neon.
Bristol Bay’s river: the Naknek runs the world’s biggest sockeye run and enormous rainbow trout.
The Namekagon runs smallmouth and trout through the St. Croix wilderness, a national scenic riverway.
The river of the noonday sun: the Nantahala runs cold trout through a gorge too deep for morning light.
Delmarva’s tidal river: the Nanticoke runs cypress-lined and brackish, holding stripers, perch and largemouth in the same trip.
Rhode Island's surf-casting soul: rocky points named by generations, albie blitzes in September, and the bay that gave the striper its scientific address.
Naugatuck River: a Connecticut river with a year-round catch-and-release trout area and two Atlantic salmon management sections.
The two-state canyon behind the San Juan: houseboat water of pike, smallmouth and kokanee stretching from New Mexico into Colorado.
The Panhandle's quiet pier town: emerald surf, a 1,500-foot pier, and Santa Rosa Sound flats without the Destin crowds.
Nawiliwili Bay: Kauai's Lihue harbor, with a state fisheries management area inside the piers.
An East Texas river followed by two Big Thicket National Preserve units from Town Bluff Dam to the saltwater barrier at Beaumont.
An 11,235-acre Alabama Power reservoir on the Coosa between Weiss Dam and Gadsden, where ADCNR rates the spotted bass among the state's best.
A power-plant lake near Center that North Dakota Game and Fish calls the best largemouth bass lake in the state.
Southeast Kansas' Neosho: catfish water fished from public access sites, since Kansas treats its bed as private.
A Tillamook County coastal river with hatchery-supported winter and summer steelhead, spring and fall chinook, wild coho seasons and sea-run cutthroat.
The Neuse: North Carolina's long river of piedmont bass water, tidewater giants and the striper run rebuilding toward its name.
New Hogan Lake on the Calaveras River: a Corps of Engineers reservoir in the Sierra foothills that CDFW calls one of the few lakes in California with striped bass, alongside three kinds of black bass.
The Mother Lode’s deep blue vault: New Melones stacks bass on submerged mine country and kokanee over 300-foot water.
New River, Virginia: about 160 miles of smallmouth, walleye and muskellunge water from Grayson County to Giles County.
New River Gorge: 53 miles of the New River inside a national park and preserve, with catch-and-release reaches for black bass and walleye.
A 4,450-acre New Hampshire lake trout and salmon lake in the Bristol area, with a Fish and Game launch beside Wellington State Park and a fall closure at the river mouths.
Newport and Balboa piers and the harbor jetties, all on CDFW's list of places to fish without a license, with halibut, sand bass and surf corbina.
The mighty drift: trophy steelhead, lakers and kings in the Great Lakes' most powerful water.
The Niangua River in Missouri: an 11.5-mile White Ribbon Trout Area below Bennett Spring Branch, next to the Bennett Spring trout park.
Nickajack Reservoir: a 10,370-acre TVA mainstem pool on the Tennessee River below Chattanooga, riverine above and cove-lined toward the dam.
The Fourche Valley's crappie house: Nimrod's flooded timber stains rich and stacks slabs the old Arkansas way.
Ninigret Pond: Rhode Island's largest coastal salt pond, fished from the Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge shore in Charlestown.
Nebraska’s scenic river: the Niobrara runs clear over sand through canyon country, holding catfish and smallmouth.
A 6,017-acre Corps lake on the Nolin River in Edmonson, Grayson and Hart counties, under Kentucky's special length limits for bass, crappie and walleye.
Norfork Lake: a 22,000-acre Corps reservoir on the Arkansas–Missouri line, with striped bass, walleye and a trout tailwater below the dam.
Norris Reservoir: TVA's first reservoir, 34,200 acres on the Clinch and Powell rivers, stocked every year with striped bass, crappie and walleye.
The North Fork Clearwater above Dworshak Reservoir, a trout river in Clearwater County cut off from steelhead since Dworshak Dam was built.
The North Platte below Gray Reef Dam in Natrona County: a tailwater with its own 2026 Wyoming rules and public access areas toward Casper.
Noxon Rapids Reservoir: a 7,592-acre reservoir on the lower Clark Fork in Sanders County, behind Avista's Noxon Rapids Dam.
A Middletown millpond: Noxontown holds largemouth, pickerel and crappie in tidal-fed water.
The ShareLunker capital: West Texas' big-bass phenomenon, where 13-pounders make Tuesday news and forward sonar changed everything.
A red-rock trout stream through Oak Creek Canyon above Sedona, with a catch-and-release section and wild and stocked trout, recovering from 2026 post-fire flooding.
Oak Orchard Creek: an Orleans County tributary of Lake Ontario, with DEC's seasonal tributary rules up to Waterport Dam.
A 2,100-acre Fairfax Water reservoir between Fairfax and Prince William counties, with a largemouth fishery Virginia DWR ranks best in its district.
Ocean City, Maryland: the Atlantic inlet town between the ocean and the coastal bays, with Maryland's Atlantic striped bass slot of 28-31 inches.
Ocean Lake: a Riverton Reclamation Project lake inside an 11,505-acre Wyoming Game and Fish habitat area, managed for walleye with yearly fingerling stocking.
North County's working harbor: a classic SoCal pier, thresher water off the sand, and the last easy launch before Pendleton's empty coast.
The lower Oconto River: a Green Bay tributary below the Stiles dam, with Great Lakes trout and salmon runs at the mouth and a warmwater fishery.
A Cascade lake beside Highway 58 that holds Oregon's lake trout record, with a 25-a-day kokanee limit and bull trout that must be released.
The canyon commuter: Ogden's home tailwater drops through its namesake canyon with browns rising minutes from downtown.
Okatibbee Lake: a 3,500-acre Corps reservoir north of Meridian where MDWFP manages the fishery under statewide limits.
A 22,500-acre Corps of Engineers lake on the Cumberland near Nashville, with TWRA fish attractors, accessible fishing piers and its own reservoir limits.
New York's walleye heartland: 51,000 shallow acres that behave like a Great Lake and produce like a hatchery.
Onota Lake: a 653-acre great pond in Pittsfield, stocked with trout each spring and fall, with a long record of trophy trout and some large northern pike.
The Porcupine Mountains river: the Ontonagon runs steelhead and salmon into Lake Superior’s wild shore.
A Corps of Engineers lake on the Verdigris River northeast of Tulsa, where ODWC stocks hybrid striped bass and walleye and Will Rogers' birthplace looks over the water.
Orange Lake: a shallow lake at Cross Creek in Alachua County, reached from the county boat ramp beside Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park.
Ossipee Lake: a stocked Carroll County lake that New Hampshire Fish and Game manages for both coldwater and warmwater fish.
The Oswego River below Varick Dam: the last stretch of a 23-mile river where DEC stocks Chinook salmon and steelhead, and where fall salmon stop at the first dam they cannot pass.
Otisco Lake: the easternmost Finger Lake, split by a causeway, where DEC stocks 11,000 tiger muskellunge every year.
The Glimmerglass of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and the source of the Susquehanna: a deep lake at Cooperstown where DEC stocks lake trout and allows one a day at 23 inches.
Otter Creek: Vermont's longest river, with trout in its headwaters and smallmouth and pike lower down toward Lake Champlain.
Otter Creek Reservoir near Antimony: a heavily stocked rainbow trout water in Piute County, drawn down to about 10 percent in the 2026 drought.
Otter Tail County's largest lake, which the DNR calls the tenth largest lake entirely within Minnesota, with three state public water accesses.
North Louisiana’s big river: the Ouachita runs catfish, crappie and bass past Monroe toward the Black.
The Outer Banks: barrier-island surf, inlet and pier fishing, much of it inside Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
Owasco Lake: an 11-mile Finger Lake at Auburn that DEC stocks every year with lake, brown and rainbow trout.
The Owens River near Bishop: CDFW wild trout water below Pleasant Valley Dam, with reach-by-reach rules.
The lower Owyhee below Owyhee Dam: a desert tailwater ODFW manages for brown trout and hatchery rainbows, with browns catch-and-release.
San Francisco's surf-fishing porch: striped bass in the Pacific wash, a pier built for crabs and salmon water beyond the fog line.
Pactola Reservoir: an 825-acre Black Hills reservoir west of Rapid City with stocked rainbows, lake trout and a new kokanee program.
The big sound behind the Outer Banks, where adult red drum gather in summer to spawn and North Carolina holds harvest to one fish between 18 and 27 inches.
Panama City Beach: a Gulf beach town with the 1,500-foot Russell-Fields City Pier and the jetties of St. Andrews State Park at the pass.
Southern Utah's trout bowl at 8,400 feet: rainbows fattened on scuds, a cutthroat comeback, and ice fishing framed by red-rock country.
The last free river: the Pascagoula runs undammed to the gulf, holding bass, bream and coastal species in its swamps.
Patagonia Lake State Park: a 265-acre lake on Sonoita Creek in southeastern Arizona with largemouth bass, channel and flathead catfish, crappie and sunfish, and rainbow trout stocked from November through March.
One of Reclamation's first dams, in a granite canyon of the North Platte southwest of Casper, holding a reservoir where Wyoming Game and Fish stocks rainbow and cutthroat trout and kokanee.
Patoka Lake: an 8,800-acre southern Indiana reservoir with ten launch ramps, stocked walleye and hybrid striped bass, and no outboard limit.
Patuxent River: a Maryland river that turns tidal below the Route 214 bridge, with Prince George's County launches at Jug Bay.
Rhode Island’s border river: the Pawcatuck runs trout, bass and a returning herring run to the sea.
Rhode Island’s urban river: the Pawtuxet runs stocked trout and bass through Cranston and Warwick.
Idaho's Payette: a 75-mile main stem with trout, bass and catfish, and a South Fork stocked with rainbows all summer.
New Mexico's canyon classic: brown trout pocket water through red-rock and pine, an hour from Santa Fe and centuries from hurry.
The Pemi: New Hampshire’s central river runs trout and smallmouth from Franconia Notch to the Merrimack.
A limestone stream that rises at Penns Cave and runs to the Susquehanna, with wild brown trout and special-regulation water from Coburn down through the Poe Paddy gorge.
Maine’s restored river: the Penobscot runs salmon, smallmouth and stripers after historic dam removals.
The deep pass city: emerald surf, monster bull reds in the bay, and the western gate of Florida fishing.
Nashville's home lake: hybrids under the birds, smallmouth on the rocks, ten minutes from downtown.
The Pere Marquette: a free-flowing Wild and Scenic river from Baldwin to Ludington, with a flies-only, no-kill reach and self-sustaining steelhead and salmon runs.
Kansas' crappie college: timber-lined Delaware River water where the state learns to spider-rig, plus white bass runs and heavyweight flatheads.
Petenwell Lake: a 23,173-acre Wisconsin River flowage between Necedah and Nekoosa where walleye draw two-thirds of the spring fishing and white bass most of the rest.
Pewaukee Lake in Waukesha County: 2,437 acres with a 50-inch muskellunge minimum and two WDNR-listed ramps.
Blue Ridge foothills water: Philpott holds smallmouth, walleye and stocked trout in clear mountain-fed depths.
Pickwick Reservoir: a three-state TVA lake below Wilson Dam that Alabama's biologists rate for its smallmouth bass.
A 10-horsepower Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District lake that produced Ohio's state-record muskellunge and flathead catfish, both in 1972.
The creek that carved Pennsylvania's Grand Canyon, with trout water above Waterville and a warmer smallmouth fishery toward Jersey Shore.
Pine Creek Lake: a 3,750-acre Corps of Engineers lake on the Little River in McCurtain County, ringed by the forested Kiamichi Mountains.
Kings River water: Pine Flat holds spotted bass and trout in a steep Sierra foothill canyon.
Pineview Reservoir: the Ogden Valley reservoir that holds Utah's tiger muskie records, drawn down through 2026 for Ogden City's pipeline work.
Pipestem Reservoir: an 840-acre Corps of Engineers lake on Pipestem Creek north of Jamestown, where North Dakota Game and Fish finds pike, perch and walleye abundant.
Platte River: one of the two streams where Michigan stocked the first Great Lakes coho in 1966, home to the state’s main coho egg-collection weir.
The lower Platte at Louisville: a USGS-gauged reach with canoe access from Louisville State Recreation Area.
Plum Island and the Parker River refuge at the Merrimack's mouth, whose surf fishing the Fish and Wildlife Service ranks among the area's finest.
Rhode Island’s fishing port: Point Judith’s breachway and rocks hold stripers, blues and albies from shore.
Where Missouri's muskie program began in 1966: a 7,820-acre Corps lake in the western Ozarks with strong crappie and bass numbers.
Pomona Reservoir: a 4,000-acre Corps of Engineers lake in Osage County, 30 miles south of Topeka, where KDWP reports walleye, catfish, white bass and wipers.
Port Aransas: the town on Mustang Island at the Aransas Pass ship channel, with Gulf, jetty and bay fishing for red drum, spotted seatrout and flounder.
Port Mansfield: a Willacy County Navigation District harbor on the Lower Laguna Madre with two public ramps and a channel nine miles to the Gulf.
Possum Kingdom Lake: a clear, rock-lined Brazos River reservoir west of Fort Worth, stocked with striped bass by TPWD in most years.
The seep-lake sea: sand dunes drowned in irrigation water, walleye in the stumps and a desert fishery with Everglades looks.
The nation's smallmouth river: ledges, grass and history from Harpers Ferry to the fall line.
Presque Isle Bay: the Erie harbor enclosed by Presque Isle State Park, fished from park piers and launches for perch, bass, panfish and steelhead, and through the ice in winter.
Idaho’s crown jewel: Priest Lake holds mackinaw in cold, clear water under the Selkirks, with a wild upper lake beyond.
The Crooked River reservoir behind Bowman Dam south of Prineville: stocked trout, bass and crappie, and a state park certified as an International Dark Sky Park.
Utah's home river: brown trout by the thousand in the middle and lower canyons.
The Arkansas River's desert lake: walleye, wipers and smallmouth under sandstone bluffs.
The reach of Putah Creek between Monticello Dam and Lake Solano: catch-and-release trout water with barbless artificial lures, open all year.
The two-state walleye commons: Pennsylvania and Ohio share a shallow prairie-style reservoir famous for walleye, crappie and carp that eat bread from your hand.
The desert inland sea of giant cutthroat: ladders, beaches and 20-pound possibilities.
A 24,012-acre drinking-water reservoir with wild lake trout and landlocked salmon, fished during a DCR season from three gated boat launch areas.
Rainy Lake: a 227,604-acre Minnesota–Ontario border lake, a third of it inside Voyageurs National Park, fished under Minnesota's Rainy Lake walleye rule.
A 6,000-acre headwater lake in Maine's Rangeley region, managed for landlocked salmon and brook trout sustained by annual stocking.
Rapid River: 3.2 miles of fly-fishing-only water from Middle Dam to Umbagog Lake, where every brook trout goes back.
The Rappahannock: smallmouth and redbreast above Fredericksburg, tidal bass and catfish below, and spring runs past the old Embrey Dam site.
The bay between New Jersey's Bayshore and Staten Island, fished under New Jersey's marine rules for striped bass, bluefish, fluke and blackfish.
Central New Jersey's river from the North and South branches to Raritan Bay, with stocked trout upstream, a catch-and-release gorge and dam removals reopening the lower river to shad.
Iowa's ocean: the state's big Corps reservoir, grinding out walleye, crappie and wipers across wind-swept southern-Iowa flats.
The largest manmade lake entirely within Pennsylvania: an 8,300-acre Corps reservoir where PFBC stocks striped bass, lake trout, walleye and muskellunge.
The Red River at Shreveport and Bossier City, the top of the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, where the Red River Waterway Commission restocks Florida largemouth bass.
The Red River of the North at Grand Forks: a turbid border river managed jointly by North Dakota and Minnesota, known for channel catfish over 30 pounds, with walleye, pike and sauger.
Iowa's largest lake: Red Rock on the Des Moines River holds crappie, white bass, wipers and channel catfish.
Reelfoot Lake: Tennessee's largest natural lake, a 10,427-acre earthquake basin that TWRA ranks among the state's best for crappie and bluegill.
Rehoboth Bay: the northern of Delaware's Inland Bays, linked to Indian River Bay by Massey's Ditch and reached from DNREC's Massey's Landing ramp.
A 1971 Corps lake on the Big Muddy, which IDNR rates excellent for channel catfish and good for crappie, white bass and flathead catfish.
Richland-Chambers Reservoir: 41,356 acres southeast of Corsicana where TPWD rates catfish, crappie and white and hybrid striped bass excellent.
A 1,000-acre reservoir in Ridgway State Park with trout, kokanee, splake and newly introduced walleye, where every smallmouth bass caught must be killed.
The Cowlitz's big pool: Riffe's drowned valley runs landlocked coho, tiger-striped bass water and fog-forest solitude.
The San Luis Valley’s river: the Rio Grande runs Gold Medal browns below the San Juans.
The Rio Grande in the Taos gorge: an 800-foot canyon in the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, reached on foot.
The Roanoke below Roanoke Rapids Dam: striped bass country where harvest is closed until at least March 1, 2027.
The Gold Medal freestone that keeps pace with its famous neighbors, Aspen to Glenwood.
An Arkansas River navigation pool: Kerr holds crappie, catfish and current in eastern Oklahoma.
Missoula's wilderness-grade trout stream: 50 miles of pocket water and a famous stonefly riot.
The art-town flats: protected bays, whooping cranes and classic wade fishing for trout and reds.
The Rocky River: a Cleveland Metroparks stream with an ODNR-stocked steelhead run and public fords along Valley Parkway.
Rogue River: 215 miles from Crater Lake to the Pacific at Gold Beach, one of the first eight Wild and Scenic rivers.
The Salt River's desert bass factory: saguaro shorelines and spring topwater to remember.
Minnesota's driftless jewel: limestone spring creeks braiding through bluff country, thick with wild browns and bikeable access.
Jackson’s Rez: a 33,000-acre Pearl River impoundment with timber, oxbows and pad flats for crappie, bass, bream and catfish.
Rough River Lake: a reservoir in Breckinridge and Grayson counties where KDFWR rates the hybrid striped bass population excellent.
Round Valley Reservoir: 2,350 acres and about 180 feet deep, with a self-sustaining lake trout population and more New Jersey state records than any other water.
Trout and largemouth bass in the marshes and ponds of Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge, at 6,000 feet in Elko County.
A Reclamation reservoir on the Fryingpan River with rainbow, brown and lake trout, above a 14-mile reach of river that CPW limits to flies and lures.
Rufus Woods Lake: 51 miles of Columbia River reservoir above Chief Joseph Dam, where the license you need depends on which shore you fish.
Wine-country steelhead: the Russian still runs chrome through the redwoods when winter rain opens the mouth.
Russian River: a clearwater Kenai tributary near Cooper Landing with two sockeye runs, fly-fishing-only water and strict bear rules.
Nevada’s desert walleye water: Rye Patch holds walleye, wipers and crappie on the Humboldt River.
A Texas–Louisiana border estuary at the mouths of the Sabine and Neches rivers, open to anglers licensed in either state.
The border pass where Texas and Louisiana trade water: jetties, ship channel and marsh drains funneling everything between Sabine Lake and the Gulf.
Sacandaga River: a Hamilton County trout river above Great Sacandaga Lake, stocked each May by New York DEC in the town of Wells.
The White Mountains’ river: the Saco runs trout and smallmouth from Crawford Notch to the Maine coast.
California's workhorse: king salmon runs, wild rainbows below Shasta, and the striper migrations that feed a valley's fishing culture.
Saginaw Bay: Lake Huron's large shallow bay, where Michigan DNR surveys show walleye recovered since the late 2000s and yellow perch still low.
The Salt River's postcard pool: desert canyon walls, yellow bass swarms and largemouth living under the tour boat's wake.
The St. Croix National Scenic Riverway: smallmouth water above St. Croix Falls and a mixed fishery below, under Minnesota–Wisconsin boundary rules.
St. Joe River: a westslope cutthroat river in the Idaho Panhandle where no cutthroat may be kept.
Florida's longest river runs north for 310 miles; around DeLand it is a slow, wide channel of largemouth water, spring runs and a winter shad run.
The St. Marks meets the Wakulla at San Marcos de Apalache and runs past the refuge lighthouse into Apalachee Bay.
Sakonnet River: Rhode Island salt water reached from state launches at Sakonnet Point, Fogland and the Sakonnet River Bridge.
Crappie water on the upper Wabash: Salamonie Lake’s 2,665 acres, with walleye and white bass in the tailwater below the dam.
Pulaski’s legend: the Salmon River stacks Great Lakes kings, coho and steelhead thicker than any tributary in the East.
The Salmon River at White Bird: the lower canyon of a 425-mile free-flowing river whose whole drainage lies in Idaho.
Salt Fork Lake: a Guernsey County reservoir where Ohio's Division of Wildlife stocks muskellunge and saugeye.
The Lower Salt River below Stewart Mountain Dam, east of Phoenix: a dam-controlled desert river where seasonal bald eagle closures and quagga mussel rules apply.
A cold tailwater in the capital: the Saluda runs trout below Lake Murray through Columbia.
Sam Rayburn Reservoir: a 114,500-acre Corps of Engineers lake on the Angelina River in East Texas, where TPWD rates the largemouth, crappie and catfish fishing excellent year-round.
San Carlos Lake: a Gila River reservoir on San Carlos Apache tribal land, fished under tribal permits when there is water in it.
The San Juan below Navajo Dam: 3.75 miles of catch-and-release Special Trout Water inside Navajo Lake State Park.
The largest off-stream reservoir in the United States by California State Parks' count, filled with Delta water pumped up from O'Neill Forebay, and closed to boats when the red wind lights flash.
Telluride's river: a free-flowing ribbon dropping from the box canyon through cottonwood gold, wild trout the whole way.
An East Bay drinking-water reservoir between Orinda and El Sobrante that EBMUD stocks regularly with trout and catfish, open from February to mid-November.
New Jersey's striper doorstep: seven miles of federal beach where the fall run hits first.
Sandy River: a Mount Hood river at Portland's edge, open all year for hatchery salmon and steelhead below the Salmon River.
The Santee River below the Santee Cooper lakes: striped bass under SCDNR's slot and summer closure, and a 20-shad limit.
The Saranac chain near Saranac Lake village: Upper Saranac, stocked with lake trout every year, and the shallower Middle and Lower lakes joined by a lock.
Sarasota Bay's grass-flat classroom: trout and snook behind the keys, tarpon off Longboat and a big-city fishery wearing resort clothes.
Sardis Lake: the oldest of north Mississippi's four Corps flood-control reservoirs, managed by MDWFP with a 12-inch crappie minimum.
Fairfield County’s hidden water: Saugatuck Reservoir holds trout and bass under strict watershed rules.
A wild trout tailwater in Garrett County that Maryland DNR manages under trophy rules, with no stocking.
Saylorville Lake: the Corps of Engineers' flood-control reservoir on the Des Moines River, 11 miles above Des Moines, with crappie, white bass, wipers and channel catfish.
Utah’s high cold pantry: Scofield stacks tiger trout and cutts at 7,600 feet, and its ice season out-fishes its summers.
Sebago Lake: Maine's deepest lake and a Portland Water District supply, where lake trout, landlocked salmon and bass lead the state's species list.
Florida's snook capital: one violent little cut in the barrier island where the Indian River Lagoon breathes through to the Atlantic.
A 100-mile Idaho wilderness river with cutthroat, rainbow and bull trout, where float permits come by lottery.
Wyoming’s desert trout lake: Seminoe grows big rainbows and browns in the sagebrush, with walleye moving in.
Seneca Lake: the deepest and second-largest Finger Lake, where DEC stocks lake trout, brown trout and landlocked salmon every year.
Resurrection Bay's charter capital: silver salmon derbies, glacier-fed halibut water and Alaska's most accessible ocean fishery.
Seymour Lake: a 1,769-acre Northeast Kingdom lake that Vermont Fish and Wildlife counts among its lake trout and landlocked salmon waters.
Shabbona Lake: a 318.8-acre DeKalb County fishing lake that the Illinois General Assembly named the Muskie Capitol of Illinois in 2011.
Shasta Lake: the reservoir behind Shasta Dam on the upper Sacramento River, where CDFW plants trout through spring, summer and fall.
The Sierra's family trophy pond: Edison's mountain reservoir of kokanee derbies, planted rainbows and campfire culture at 5,500 feet.
Shawano Lake: a 6,215-acre shallow drainage lake in Shawano County where the DNR rates northern pike abundant and walleye and largemouth common.
Sheboygan: a Lake Michigan harbor town where the DNR stocks chinook, coho, brown trout and steelhead, with two fishing piers at the river mouth.
Smallmouth water through the Shenandoah Valley: the South Fork and main stem run over ledges, islands and long pools.
A Forest Service lake on Spring Creek southwest of Rapid City, stocked with rainbow trout and walleye, with largemouth bass, perch, crappie and bluegill.
A 2,845-acre reservoir near Loup City with a protected walleye slot, a 10-inch crappie minimum and summer drawdowns.
North Dakota’s longest river: the Sheyenne winds 590 miles of walleye, pike and catfish across the prairie.
The White Mountains' walleye pocket: a small, deep lake where Arizona's unlikely gold swims beneath the ponderosas.
The Siletz: a Lincoln County river with summer steelhead in the gorge, fall Chinook and wild coho in season, and no fishing above Siletz Falls.
Silver Creek: the spring creek near Picabo that IDFG calls a world-class trout fishery, with The Nature Conservancy's preserve on its upper reach.
Silver Lake, Dover: a city-owned lake on the St. Jones River where boats need city and state permits and DNREC advises limiting fish meals.
The highest reservoir in the State Water Project, in the San Bernardino National Forest, with DWR rainbow trout plants from late December to early May.
The outer-coast jewel: Sitka's ocean kings, halibut barn doors and whale-blown mornings where Alaska's blue water meets the volcano.
Yakutat's Situk: an 18-mile river that ADF&G says holds the largest known steelhead population in Alaska.
The Skagit: a Puget Sound river regulated reach by reach, with fall coho seasons and wild steelhead fishing only when WDFW opens it by emergency rule.
A 10,190-acre Corps lake on Hominy Creek in the Osage Hills, with hybrid striped bass, three black bass species and crappie.
A 25,000-acre glacial lake on the Kenai River inside the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, with wild lake trout and Dolly Varden and no king salmon fishing.
Puget Sound steelhead: the Skykomish runs winter and summer fish an hour from Seattle.
Smith Mountain Lake: a 20,600-acre power-company reservoir that Virginia DWR manages for black bass and stocked striped bass.
California's crown jewel: the last major undammed river, running emerald through redwoods with the state's biggest steelhead and king salmon.
Kansas City's northern big water: crappie beds, walleye programs and 7,200 acres of room.
The Snake River below Jackson Lake Dam: native Snake River cutthroat water through Grand Teton National Park, floated from launches the park names.
The South Fork: Idaho's big cottonwood tailwater, thick with native cutthroat and heavy browns under the Tetons' far side.
Somerset Reservoir: a hydro storage reservoir at the head of the Deerfield River, with an undeveloped shoreline inside the Green Mountain National Forest.
Sooner Lake: OG+E's 5,400-acre power-plant lake on US 177 between Stillwater and Ponca City, with its own striped bass and walleye rules.
South Branch Potomac: a 141-mile river with stocked trout through Pendleton County and dense smallmouth bass below Petersburg.
The South Fork Boise below Anderson Ranch Dam: a Reclamation tailwater northeast of Mountain Home whose flows follow releases from a 474,900-acre-foot reservoir.
A Clearwater River tributary in Idaho County, part of the basin where Clearwater 'B' strain steelhead return from the Pacific, with seasons set by IDFG each year.
A 1,640-acre Elko County reservoir with stocked trout, smallmouth and largemouth bass, wipers and channel catfish.
The border highlands' twin star: smallmouth over flooded bluffs, the famous tailwater below and a two-state lake wearing TVA calm.
South Padre Island: the southern end of the Lower Laguna Madre at Brazos Santiago Pass, where TPWD biologists say snook, gray snapper and pompano add to the seatrout and red drum.
The Front Range's home tailwater: Cheesman Canyon's technical rainbows minutes from Denver.
A 77-acre, 100-foot-deep former gravel pit in Sparks that NDOW stocks every year with rainbow, brown and tiger trout.
South Park's trophy engine: gold-medal stillwater at 8,700 feet, where pike ambush and rainbows outgrow every neighbor.
The big blue sister: Iowa's largest natural lake, grinding walleye classics and jumbo perch across the glacial flats north of Okoboji.
The benchmark Pennsylvania limestoner: wild browns every fifty feet through Happy Valley, catch-and-release for over forty years.
Spring River: a cold, spring-fed river below Mammoth Spring where AGFC manages 12 miles of trout water in Fulton County.
A Hunterdon County water-supply reservoir where NJ Fish & Wildlife stocks northern pike, hybrid striped bass and trout, with a 10-horsepower limit on boats.
Squam Lake: a 6,791-acre New Hampshire lake managed under Fish and Game's lake trout and salmon rules, with new 2026 lake trout limits.
Comanche Creek Reservoir, formerly Squaw Creek: a clear, deep power-plant lake near Glen Rose where TPWD rates the channel catfish exceptional and bass fishing best in winter.
Ocean beach, inlet and estuary around St. Augustine, with free county ramps, a pier closed for repairs and NOAA tide stations from the beach to the Matanzas River.
St. Clair River: a Michigan connecting water with one of the state's few lake sturgeon possession seasons.
Florida's long lazy north-flowing giant: shad runs, springtime specks and bass water braided through lakes for 300 miles.
Michigan's southwest steelhead artery: fish ladders through two states, a summer-run bonus and Berrien County's year-round chrome.
Stafford Pond: a Tiverton pond on Rhode Island's list of designated trout waters, with statewide limits for bass, pickerel and pike.
Truckee's high shelf: Stampede stacks kokanee schools and Lahontan legends over sage flats at the Sierra's eastern gate.
Starvation Reservoir: a Reclamation lake near Duchesne managed as Fred Hayes State Park, with walleye, smallmouth, brown trout and heavy rainbow trout stocking.
A Gold Medal trout lake under Hahns Peak: Steamboat Lake's 1,053 acres sit at about 8,000 feet in Routt County.
The Big Bend’s trout town: grass flats north and south of the river mouth, scallops in summer, and a fleet that reads tides like scripture.
The clear one at Killeen’s door: Stillhouse hides hybrid schools, big smallmouth genes and hydrilla flats under a modest profile.
Wachusett’s quiet feeder: a small wild-trout stream winding through central Massachusetts meadows toward the reservoir.
The walleye surprise of the Ozarks: clear, windy and underrated.
Central West Virginia’s muskie lake: Stonewall Jackson holds toothy fish and bass in a state park setting.
Storm Lake: a 3,097-acre natural lake in Buena Vista County, dredged from 2003 to 2017, with walleye under a protected slot.
Strawberry Reservoir in Wasatch County: cutthroat, rainbow and kokanee under DWR's 15- to 22-inch cutthroat release rule.
The Strawberry below Soldier Creek: a pinyon-canyon tailwater of wild browns, scuds and solitude an hour from the famous reservoir.
The Sailfish Capital: where the St. Lucie meets the Indian River and the Gulf Stream swings close enough to raise January kites.
Indiana’s canoe creek: Sugar Creek runs smallmouth past the cliffs of Turkey Run and Shades.
A 2,790-acre Corps reservoir on the Gauley River near Summersville, known for clear water and rocky shores, with stocked trout in the tailwaters below the dam.
The head of the Chesapeake: the Flats grow grass beds and trophy striped bass in water you can wade at low tide.
Susquehanna River: a mile-wide smallmouth river where the 98 miles from Sunbury to Holtwood Dam are catch-and-release for bass all year.
New Jersey’s first state park lake: Swartswood holds walleye, bass and hybrid stripers in Sussex County.
The Swift River below Quabbin: a 5.5-mile tailwater with year-round catch-and-release water above Route 9 and wild brook trout under study.
Sylvan Lake: a 669-acre man-made lake at Rome City in Noble County, stocked with walleye every year and known to IDNR for bluegill and crappie.
Ozark clear water at its finest: Table Rock’s bluffs and brush grow spotted bass, whites and crappie under Branson’s hills.
Amber water past Michigan's Upper Falls: the Tahquamenon holds pike, walleye, muskie and smallmouth from Newberry to Whitefish Bay.
Three rivers meet at Talkeetna: the Talkeetna runs kings, silvers and rainbows below Denali.
Tallapoosa River: a 235-mile Piedmont river through four Alabama reservoirs, with redeye bass in its upper reaches.
Florida's big urban estuary: 400 square miles of grass flats, mangroves and a snook-redfish-trout slam within sight of downtown.
Lower Eastern Shore water off Somerset County, where Maryland DNR reports striped bass, red drum and speckled trout in the shallows.
The Tar River at Tarboro: a coastal plain river where state biologists sample striped bass and both shad species every spring.
South Park's third wheel: Tarryall's sage-flat water fishes the famous valley's program without the famous valley's parking.
The mysis tailwater where Colorado's heaviest trout sip tiny flies below the dam.
Kentucky's crappie densities in a Salt River valley: flooded timber wall-to-wall and a fishery managed like a panfish factory.
A Cherokee National Forest trout river above Tellico Plains with a seasonal permit area, a winter delayed-harvest reach and wild-trout tributaries.
A deep, clear Ozark-highland reservoir on the Illinois River with three black bass species, crappie under a special limit, and year-round trout stocking below the dam.
Five miles of fishing pier disguised as a road: the world's longest man-made fishing structure, pointing straight into Galveston Bay.
The Thames River: Connecticut's tidal river from Norwich to New London Harbor, fished for striped bass, bluefish and flounder from Fort Trumbull's pier and two public launches.
The Corps' 71,100-acre Clarks Hill lake on the Savannah River, shared by Georgia and South Carolina and still reopening ramps after Hurricane Helene.
Middle Tennessee’s best reservoir smallmouth fishery by TWRA’s account, with stocked stripers and a trout tailwater below the dam.
Indiana’s smallmouth float: the Tippecanoe winds 180 miles of gravel and current through farm country to the Wabash.
North Georgia's gentle giant: a tailwater and freestone in one river, floating trout water through Blue Ridge pastures to the swinging bridge.
Toledo Bend: the Sabine River Authority's 65-mile reservoir on the Texas-Louisiana line, with hydrilla, timber and a TPWD-managed bass fishery.
An Ocean County river with spring trout stocking and a year-round Trout Conservation Area below Riverwood Park.
Trout on the state line: Topaz Lake is open year-round, and either a Nevada or a California license covers it.
A long, deep, low-nutrient lake in Antrim County's Chain of Lakes, managed by Michigan DNR as a Type E trout lake with a 50-inch muskellunge minimum.
Tillamook's workhorse: the Trask runs winter steelhead and fall kings through dairy-country bends a cheese-tour away from the bay.
Trinidad Lake on the Purgatoire: a Corps flood-control lake run as a state park, stocked each year with rainbow trout and holding walleye and bass.
Trinity Lake: Reclamation's 2,448,000-acre-foot reservoir on the Trinity River, a state trophy black bass water with its own kokanee limit.
The Trinity River below Lewiston Dam: hatchery-supported steelhead and Chinook water in Trinity County, under barbless-hook Klamath Basin rules and a fly-only reach at the top.
The Sierra's escape artist: Tahoe's outlet river running wild browns through Reno's backyard, with trophy water on both sides of the state line.
A 55,600-acre Corps flood-control reservoir with 8,800 acres of standing timber, and crappie, catfish, hybrids, walleye and paddlefish.
Northeast Iowa’s Driftless river: the Turkey runs smallmouth through bluffs to the Mississippi.
Turtle-Flambeau Flowage: a 12,942-acre Iron County flowage inside a state scenic waters area, with walleye rated abundant by WDNR.
Reclamation's Twin Lakes Reservoir south of Leadville, where lake trout from 22 to 34 inches must go back and the state cutthroat record was caught.
A 1,750-acre Corps of Engineers lake near Grafton whose bass, walleye and musky reproduce naturally, with stocked trout in the tailwater below the dam.
The Tygart Valley River above Tygart Lake, gauged at Belington, with stocked trout in its Randolph County headwaters and smallmouth bass and musky downstream.
Umbagog Lake: a 7,850-acre interstate lake on the Maine-New Hampshire line, unstocked, with salmon, brook trout and smallmouth as its main fisheries.
The Umpqua River system around Roseburg: a mainstem ODFW calls one of the country's finest smallmouth fisheries, spring shad, hatchery steelhead and coho, and the North Umpqua's fly water above Deadline Falls.
The Uncompahgre: Ridgway's tailwater gift, where the San Juans' silt turned to trophy water below the dam at Pa-Co-Chu-Puk.
South Jersey’s biggest lake: Union Lake holds bass, pickerel and crappie in tannic Maurice River water.
Smallmouth, walleye and nearby trout streams in northeast Iowa, with a catch-and-release smallmouth reach below Decorah.
Klamath Basin lake known for large native redband trout, now under an ODFW catch-and-release, no-bait rule through October 31 after record-low spawning counts.
The comeback of comebacks: tribal-state cooperation resurrected Red Lake's walleye, and the ice city that followed became Minnesota legend.
A Canadian River reservoir nearly 13 miles long at Logan, where New Mexico's fall surveys find some of the state's highest white bass numbers.
Vallecito Reservoir: a 2,720-acre Bureau of Reclamation lake on the Pine River where Colorado Parks and Wildlife says trophy pike are routinely caught.
Venice, Florida: a Gulf inlet town whose South Jetty walkway is closed after the 2024 hurricanes, while the city fishing pier stays open around the clock.
The Verde River: a perennial central Arizona river with 40.5 Wild and Scenic miles, smallmouth bass and catfish, and winter trout stocking near Cottonwood.
A southeast Kansas river: the Verdigris runs catfish, white bass and crappie past Independence and Coffeyville.
Louisiana marsh country: Vermilion Bay holds redfish and speckled trout west of the Atchafalaya.
The Vermilion River: a 65-mile Lake Erie tributary that Ohio stocks with steelhead each spring, cutting through the shale cliffs of Lorain County's Vermilion River Reservation before reaching the harbor at Vermilion.
Where the Chesapeake meets the Atlantic: the Bridge-Tunnel's islands, two inlets and a pier at Sandbridge.
The Wabash at Lafayette: a long free-flowing river with catfish, sauger and black bass, under Indiana's river bass slot.
Shore fishing only on a 4,041-acre drinking-water reservoir with lake trout, landlocked salmon and smallmouth bass.
Waianae Coast: Oahu's leeward shore, where the state's Waianae Small Boat Harbor has seven ramps and Pokai Bay has its own catch rules.
Waimea Bay: a North Shore bay inside the Pupukea Marine Life Conservation District, open only to shore hook-and-line fishing for finfish.
A glacial lake at the foot of the Wallowa Mountains with self-sustaining kokanee and lake trout, summer-stocked rainbows and Oregon's record kokanee.
Walnut Creek: a Lake Erie tributary at Fairview, Pennsylvania, where PFBC's Walnut Creek Marina gives year-round access for fall and winter steelhead.
Tennessee's alpine imposter: a 6,400-acre mountain trough where trout troll the depths, smallmouth own the banks and the Appalachian Trail crosses the dam.
The TVA tailwater below Wilbur Dam at Elizabethton, stocked with rainbow trout from March through December and home to a Quality Trout Fishing Area.
Watchaug Pond: the freshwater pond at the center of Burlingame State Park in Charlestown, on Rhode Island's list of designated trout waters.
Waterbury Reservoir: an 850-acre CCC-built flood-control lake with rainbow and brown trout, smallmouth and perch, and 27 boat-in campsites.
A 39,600-acre Tennessee River reservoir between Watts Bar and Fort Loudoun dams, where TWRA stocks striped bass, crappie, walleye and Florida largemouth.
The glacial riser: a prairie-pothole lake that tripled with the wet cycle and stacked itself with walleye and jumbo perch.
The Weber River in Summit County: a Utah Blue Ribbon reach between Wanship and Echo Reservoir, with its own access law on the upper river.
Webster Lake on the Connecticut line: a 1,297-acre great pond with bass, pickerel, stocked trout and a crappie population MassWildlife calls exceptional.
The Crappie Capital of the World: the Coosa's fertile first lake in Alabama.
Cannonsville's tailwater: 18 miles of wild brown and rainbow trout water from the dam to Hancock.
West Branch Penobscot: landlocked salmon water below Ripogenus Dam, fly fishing only down to the Telos Road Bridge with a 26-inch salmon minimum.
A river recovering from acid mine drainage, with smallmouth bass in its lower 35 miles and wild trout back in its headwaters.
West Point Lake: a Corps reservoir stretching 35 miles along the Chattahoochee on the Georgia-Alabama line, with about 525 miles of shoreline.
A Wild and Scenic western Massachusetts river: the Westfield runs trout through the Berkshire hills.
Washington's salmon town: a charter fleet built for kings and coho, jetty rockfish, and razor-clam beaches under the Grays Harbor sky.
Wheeler Lake: the TVA reservoir on the Tennessee River that runs 60 miles from Guntersville Dam to Wheeler Dam, with largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass, catfish, crappie and bream.
Whiskeytown Lake in its national recreation area: kokanee, rainbow and brown trout and three kinds of black bass, with three park boat launches.
White Clay Creek: a National Wild and Scenic River near Newark that Delaware stocks with rainbow and brown trout, with a fly-fishing-only reach at the Pennsylvania line.
The White River below Bull Shoals Dam: a cold tailwater with more than 90 miles of trout water, fished under AGFC's reduced 2026 trout limits.
A 59-mile Connecticut River tributary from Ripton to Hartford, with trout in its colder reaches and smallmouth bass in the main stem.
The West Fork of the White River through Indianapolis: smallmouth bass, channel and flathead catfish in a river recovering from the 1999 fish kill.
Whitewater River: a southeast Minnesota trout stream whose Middle Branch runs through Whitewater State Park under catch-and-release rules.
Wickford Harbor on Narragansett Bay's west shore, fished under Rhode Island's saltwater rules for striped bass, tautog, scup and fluke.
Nevada’s high desert trout lake: Wildhorse grows rainbows, browns and bass at 6,200 feet in the Owyhee country.
The Willamette at Salem: steelhead, spring Chinook and coho, smallmouth bass and walleye, shad and catch-and-release sturgeon, by ODFW's count.
The Great Salt Lake's freshwater neighbor: a diked bay of wipers, walleye and gizzard shad chaos on Utah's improbable west side.
A Monongahela trout stream: the Williams runs stocked and native trout through high country.
Willowemoc Creek: the Beaverkill's largest tributary, with a year-round catch-and-release reach between Livingston Manor and Roscoe.
Wilmington: the tidal lower Cape Fear River at North Carolina's port city, with a NOAA tide station on the downtown waterfront.
Wilson Lake: a 15,500-acre Tennessee River reservoir at Florence and Muscle Shoals where smallmouth must measure 15 inches.
Central Kansas striper water: Wilson Lake’s 9,000 acres on the Saline River hold stocked stripers, walleye, white bass and catfish.
Wilson River: Tillamook State Forest water along Highway 6 with summer and winter steelhead, Chinook and cutthroat, about 70 miles from Portland.
Wind Lake: a Racine County lake that Wisconsin DNR lists at 919 acres, with panfish, largemouth, northern pike and walleye common.
A river across the reservation: the Wind runs trout from the Absarokas through a red-rock canyon.
A Lake Champlain tributary with salmon and steelhead below the Winooski One dam and trophy trout water at Waterbury.
Wolf River: part of Wisconsin's Winnebago System, where DNR biologists track the spring walleye spawn.
The Wood River in Exeter, Richmond and Hopkinton: a Rhode Island stream DEM stocks with trout in spring and again in fall.
The Rim's summer refuge: a spruce-lined trout pond at 7,500 feet where Phoenix escapes July and rainbows rise at dusk.
Worden Pond: the South Kingstown pond where Rhode Island stocks and surveys northern pike, a fish DFW says does not reproduce in the state.
An 18,994-acre Corps reservoir on the Sulphur River southwest of Texarkana, where TPWD rates white bass and crappie as the popular catches.
Washington's blue-ribbon canyon: wild rainbows on a farmland river that fishes like Montana.
Northwestern Colorado's free-flowing Green River tributary: trout water through Steamboat Springs under CPW special rules, with no limit on pike and bass downstream.
Yellow Breeches Creek: a 49-mile Cumberland Valley trout stream, stocked by the state from Route 233 to the Susquehanna, with a catch-and-release, artificial-lures-only mile below Boiling Springs.
The longest undammed river in the lower 48: 692 free miles of cutthroat, browns and rainbows flowing out of the park through Paradise Valley.
The York from West Point to Yorktown: free piers, public ramps and about 40 miles of tidal river.
The Yough through Ohiopyle: a 9.18-mile All Tackle Trophy Trout section in the river gorge, with the Great Allegheny Passage alongside.
The Lower Yuba: gold-country's wild rainbow ribbon, running clear below Englebright with steelhead genes and skwala springs.