Almost everything written about surf fishing the Outer Banks faces east. But there is a whole second shoreline behind the islands, and on the days when the ocean is unfishable — blown out, brown, full of weed — the sound is often the only water worth standing in. This is a guide to fishing it, starting with the easiest public access on Hatteras Island.
Canadian Hole, and What It Actually Is
The Haulover Day Use Area sits on the sound side of NC-12 between Avon and Buxton, a little under two miles south of Avon and a little over two miles north of Buxton. Everyone calls it Canadian Hole. The name came from the Canadian windsurfers who found the place in the early 1980s and kept coming back, and it stuck so thoroughly that the official name is now the one nobody uses.
Be clear about what it is before you drive there with a rod: this is a watersports site first. The Park Service describes Haulover and the neighboring Kite Point as some of the best kiteboarding and windsurfing water in the world when the wind is up in spring and fall, and on a good breeze the water in front of the parking lot is full of sails. The Park Service’s own page for it does not mention fishing at all.
What it does offer an angler is the easiest sound access on the island: a bathhouse with showers, changing rooms and restrooms, a bottle-filling station, a small-boat and kayak launch, wheelchair-accessible facilities, and parking for around fifty vehicles that stays open year round. The showers and restrooms close over winter.
The Water You Are Fishing
The sound here is shallow in a way that catches people out. It runs one to two feet deep near the shoreline and stays ankle-to-knee for hundreds of yards before it reaches waist height. That is what makes it forgiving for beginners on a board, and it is also what dictates how you fish it.
Shallow, clear, hard-bottomed flats mean the fish can see you long before you can see them. Wade slowly, cast further than feels necessary, and work parallel to the shore rather than straight out. Heavy surf gear is the wrong tool — this is light-tackle water.
Pamlico Sound is a nursery. The Park Service describes it as habitat that supports fish and wildlife through their whole life cycle, and that is not a decorative fact: it is why juvenile and slot-sized fish are here in numbers the ocean side cannot match at certain times of year.
What You Are Fishing For
Puppy drum are the mainstay, working the grass edges and the shallow flats, and they are the reason most people come back. Speckled trout move into the sound as the water cools and stay through the winter, which makes this the obvious plan B when the ocean is unfishable in December and January. Flounder use the flats hard through the warm months.
On flounder, one thing overrides everything else: North Carolina’s recreational season is very short. In 2026 it runs 1–14 September, with a 15-inch minimum and one fish per person per day. Outside those fourteen days, every flounder goes back regardless of size. Check the current proclamation before you keep one — the dates move year to year.
When to Go
The wind that makes this place famous is the same wind that ruins the fishing, so the two user groups want opposite conditions. Your window is a light-wind morning, early, before the boards go out — or the shoulder seasons and winter, when the water is cold and the parking lot is nearly empty.
Moving water matters here as much as it does at an inlet, just at a smaller scale. Fish a tide that is going somewhere, work the edges where a flat drops into slightly deeper water, and pay attention to the grass lines. On a dead-calm, dead-tide afternoon in July, go do something else.
Getting There, and the Ocean Side Nearby
Haulover is a day-use area, not an ORV ramp: you park and walk, and no beach driving permit is involved. If you want to run the ocean beach on the same trip, Ramp 38 is the nearest off-road access, just south of Avon on the other side of the highway, and that one does need a seashore ORV permit.
That pairing is the practical reason to know about this place. When the ocean is blown out, you are ten minutes from water that is still fishable, with a bathroom and a hot shower in the parking lot.
