The effective detection of delamination defects, especially sub-millimeter delamination defects, in metal-clad plates is of great significance in improving product quality. In this work, the laser ultrasonic (LU) local resonance method is used to locate and characterize the sub-millimeter defects in stainless/carbon steel-clad plates. The influence of the delamination radius on the amplitude and resonant frequency of the laser ultrasound was investigated using 2D axisymmetric finite element (FE) simulations. The simulation results show that both the amplitude and the first resonance frequency (FRF) are effective features for detecting large-scale delamination defects, but the FRF is a better feature for detecting tiny delamination defects. A 304/Q235/304-clad plate specimen was made through a hot rolling bonding process, which contained a large number of self-forming delamination defects. The laser ultrasonic signals of different composite states collected in the experiment have good consistency with the simulated waveforms. The experimental results show that the laser ultrasonic local resonance method is a high-resolution imaging method, which can locate and characterize the sub-millimeter delamination defects in stainless/carbon steel-clad plates.