We present the Census of the Local Universe (CLU) narrowband survey to search for emission-line (H{alpha}) galaxies. CLU-H{alpha} has imaged ~3{pi} of the sky (26470deg^2^) with four narrowband filters that probe a distance out to 200Mpc. We have obtained spectroscopic follow-up for galaxy candidates in 14 preliminary fields (101.6deg^2^) to characterize the limits and completeness of the survey. In these preliminary fields, CLU can identify emission lines down to an H{alpha} flux limit of 10^-14^erg/s/cm^2^ at 90% completeness, and recovers 83% (67%) of the H{alpha} flux from cataloged galaxies in our search volume at the {Sigma}=2.5 ({Sigma}=5) color excess levels. The contamination from galaxies with no emission lines is 61% (12%) for {Sigma}=2.5 ({Sigma}=5). Also, in the regions of overlap between our preliminary fields and previous emission-line surveys, we recover the majority of the galaxies found in previous surveys and identify an additional ~300 galaxies. In total, we find 90 galaxies with no previous distance information, several of which are interesting objects: 7 blue compact dwarfs, 1 green pea, and a Seyfert galaxy; we also identify a known planetary nebula. These objects show that the CLU-H{alpha} survey can be a discovery machine for objects in our own Galaxy and extreme galaxies out to intermediate redshifts. However, the majority of the CLU-H{alpha} galaxies identified in this work show properties consistent with normal star-forming galaxies. CLU-H{alpha} galaxies with new redshifts will be added to existing galaxy catalogs to focus the search for the electromagnetic counterpart to gravitational wave events.