Been trying to learn how to fly fish recently, been practicing my casts in local ponds and on the lake but want to go and fish a creek with it. I’ve seen suggestions on locations to fish smallmouth near Charlotte before but I’m looking for something where I can potentially wade or walk it.

Can't help you with locations but.... check online for local fishing forums. Might be some info there. Also I assume NC has a DNR. Check there. Should be a crap ton of info including if and where a stream is wadable. Also familiarize yourself with the USGS stream site for NC.

My two best for small use are the French Broad near Asheville and the New up near Crumpler. But neither of those is tremendously close. There’s a ton of streams and creeks in/around Charlotte with spots and largemouth though if you’d stoop to that. Many of them have greenways running miles of their banks so access is pretty easy.

This post made me double check myself, because I thought I was positive there were no smallies within a few counties of there and NC wildlife agrees: https://www.ncwildlife.gov/fishing/black-bass-north-carolina/smallmouth-bass

So depending on how you define near, looks like the Jacob Fork or Uwarhie rivers are you best bets, but don't know any specific spots.

Mostly posting so you have access to the official distribution map because it might be helpful for trip planning.