Fishing in 2025: Where are the Best Fishing Spots Near Me?

A lot of us tend to fish in the same spots week after week and year after year. But are your fishing the BEST spots? Are there spots nearby that might produce more and bigger fish? In this post I’ll share how I find the best fishing spots near me – and how you can too.

Tools for Finding Local Fishing Spots

There are a lot of tools I use to find better places to fish. I’ll list them here, and then walk through exactly how I use each one to find new honey-holes.

• Google Sheets
• State Website
• Online Forums
• Google Maps
• YouTube
• Fishing Apps

Local Fishing Regulations

Nobody wants their fun day fishing to be marred by a run-in with the law, right? So before you head out on the water, make sure you are legally allowed to fish in your area.

Common Fishing Regulations

• Fishing Licenses: Most spots won’t let you fish without a license. If you’re new to this, take a peek at my ultimate guide to fishing licenses in all 50 states.
• Catch Limits and Size Restrictions: Some fish have limits on how many you can catch or how big they need to be. If you can’t identify a fish, and if you don’t know if you’re allowed to keep it, practice catch & release.
• Seasonal Restrictions: Some places lay down seasonal no-fishing zones to protect the fish during breeding times.

Stick to these guidelines, and you’ll have a smooth time without any issues. Also, some states have “free fishing days” where no license is required. So if you’re not sure about fishing (you’re gonna love it) – or you want to introduce someone to the sport – these are great days to be on the water.

How I Use Each Resource

Google Sheets for Fishing Spots

Ok – this one is pretty simple. I use Google Sheets as a place to track all the information I find. It’s cool because you can then sort the locations if you want, color code, them etc. And best of all, it’s free.

Now, I’m not going to share my list of literally hundreds of the best fishing spots near me. This is about teaching you to find good spots. You remember the old parable: “Give a man a fish…”? I’m teaching you to fish. So these are the things I put in my spreadsheets:

• Name
• County
• Link to a Google Map location
• Is it good for Kayak Fishing
• Primary Species
• best Months
• Notes about it
• Stocking schedules if applicable
• Ranking (my personal scale of 1 to 5)
• Last visit

And if you notice, I said Sheets. I have one for each state I visit. I wouldn’t be surprised if within a couple more years my list is well over 1,000 fishing spots, because we plan to travel a lot more starting in 2026.

And while I won’t share my spreadsheet, I am starting to put together resources by state, like this list of 51 places to fish in West Virginia.

State Fish and Game Website

You state fish and game website should be your first stop when you’re trying to figure out “What are the best fishing spots near me?” Not only is it likely your best resource for licenses and regulations, but sometimes there is a lot more information.

For example, all of this information is available on Penssylvania’s Fish and Game website if you dig a little:

• All the fishing regulations by species
• State records by species
• The biggest fish per species caught each year, where they were caught, and often what lure was used! Talk about killer information!
• Habitat surveys / Biologist reports – this can tell you where they are finding both large quantities of fish and where the big ones are.
• Stocking schedules
• The best waters to fish in the state for each type of fish
• Interactive maps
• Access points
• Boating, Conservation, education, and more!

So your state website is easily the best place to start. I have most of them linked in my fishing license guide.

Using Online Forums to Find Great Fishing Spots

I’m old school, so when I say “online forums” I talking about everything from Facebook groups, to Reddit, to actual old-school fishing foums. There are literally thousands of them. Most of them are narrowed down by region or even specific bodies of water.

Some are focused on species-specific information like trout or smallmouth bass. Using the search function of these groups is where the magic lies. If you join as a new member and ask “hey, where are the best fishing spots near me?” Well, you’re likely to get no responses, or even rude responses.

So use that little magnifying glass to search for your information. I typically search by species or by body of water. As a bonus, you can often learn a lot about what lures work for people as well. You should be able to get the types of fish species in your area from the state website.

One of my best and favorite spots near me isn’t actually on any maps. But I saw it mentioned a few times, the photos looked amazing. People had different names for it – so it was kind of one of those “if You Know, You Know” spots. It took me months to find it – and the last tactic on this list finally revealed this treasured spot for me.

But what if your website doesn’t give you much about what bodies of water might hold fish? You probably still have hundreds of rivers, lakes, ponds, and streams to choose from – most of which you don’t even know exits – and the rest you probably don’t know the name of them. That’s where Google Maps comes into the picture!

Using Google Maps to Find Fishing Spots

There’s a reason guys like Jon. B makes fishing videos on YouTube about using Google Maps to go fishing; It works. It’s not just a gimmick that makes a cool video. You can literally open up Google Maps, and just start looking for the blue bodies of water.

Then, when you find one, you can get a satellite view to see if it looks good. It will also usually give you the name of whatever the body of water is as well. With that information, you can go back to those online forums and search for the name of the water you just found.

if it gets a ton of results, you probably found a decent spot. BUT, just because it only gets a couple of results doesn’t mean it’s bad. It could mean it is FANTASTIC! Avid fishermen don’t like to talk about their best spots that aren’t well known. So read the posts. You might find something special.

And, you can also place. apin, copy the GPS coordinates, and add that to your spreadsheet. You can also send that location to your phone – awesome for when you’re getting ready to head out to a new spot – you can navigate directly to the spot.

And of course, you can also use Google Maps on your phone. I tend to do my research on the computer. Just nicer having all the screen real estate and multiple windows open at one time.

YouTube can Reveal some Great Fishing Spots

Speaking of Jon B., I do find some spots on YouTube – both locally and for travel. So just like the tip above to search by species or body of water, these tips can work well on YouTube – and then you get to watch a video to see exactly what it looks like, what they are using, and the fish they catch.

Some people have mixed emotions about this; they feel like social media is “ruining fishing”. I feel the same way – it’s why I don’t name my favorite, lesser-known spots in my videos. But some of these spots, like the Susquehanna, Yougiogheney, or Ohio Rivers are so well known it doesn’t matter.

But honestly, other YouTubers don’t care at all – they tell you exactly where they are! As a bonus tip, you can search YouTube by location as well. So if you’re traveling to a place like “St. Petersburg, Florida” or “Detroit, Michigan,” you can also find great fishing spots near your destination.

And one other bonus, you might eventually make a few fishing friends who are also YouTubers this way.

Fishing Apps

This might be the easiest and most widely used way to find spots these days. The main app I use is called FishBrain. And it has a lot of value. BUT – because it’s so easy, you’ll likely find the spots it shows as being the Best are kind of crowded.

You may be completely fine with that. For me, I kind of see fishing as a form of meditation: I like to be alone in nature whenever I can – just me vs. the fish.

But, this can be another tool in the toolbox when you’re trying to figure out where are the best fishing spots near me. The two most beneficial features for me are this:

1. It can let me know that species are caught in a fishing spot near me that I was unaware were present
2. It can uncover entire spots I didn’t know existed.

Both fo these are in part how I finally uncovered one of my favorite spots. I was trying to find the best fishing spots near me to catch Northern Pike. To this day, I still haven’t caught one. Crazy, I know.

But, Fishbrain showed my pike catches fairly close to me. That was shocking enough. But more importantly, many of them were at a point on the map with no water! And I was kind of like “WTF?”

But it unlocked the secret to let me find that magical spot. My third or fourth trip there I caught my PB Largemouth for weight – which has since been broken. and I din;t get out there much last year, so I need to get out there a bunch this year!

Finding the Best Fishing Spots Near Me

When you first start using some of these tools to find new places to fish, you may find there are dozens – if not hundreds – of potential fishing spots within a short drive of your location. That is exactly what happened to me!

When I retired from my W2 work in 2020, I started making a list of fishing spots near me. Within a day I had 142 bodies of water on my list. Those weren’t spots – just generic bodies of water! I was honestly kind of shocked. I had fished maybe the same 5 or 10 spots for 20 years.

Over the next few years, I went on to catch over 15 new personal bests – and every one of them was at a spot I didn’t know existed before I spent time to actually look for them

Finding the Best Fishing Spots Near Me

OK, so this is a little bit of work. But so is becoming a great fisherman. Using this strategy to find your fishing spots will let you find the absolute best fishing spots near you. One alternative is just to go fish at a spot. I’ve hit a few spots that turned out surprisingly good. I’ve also had several that produced nothing.

But it’s why I try to keep a travel rod in my car and truck: You never know when you’ll come across water that ‘looks fishy.’ If you do the things I mention in this post, you will without a doubt know with confidence that you have found some of the “best fishing spots near me.” when you read other people’s posts.

And winter time is a great time to start making that list!

Good luck, and tight lines!