Categories: TRAVEL

Kayak Fishing Striped Bass Outer Gloucester Harbor at Gloucester, Massachusetts

Try drift-fishing herring chunks on unweighted hooks from a kayak in outer Gloucester Harbor, southeast of Ten Pound Island, and to be honest, things probalby won’t go very well at first. The waters here face Eastern Point’s bony western shoreline, and although the light southwest wind will push your along your driftline just fine, it will take a while to get what you’re after.

Everyone knows that this fall-run striped bass tactic: jab an unweighted hook through a chunk of mackerel or herring. Cast upwind. Drift in your kayak with the wind through productive striper waters. You’ll cover a lot of ground without having to do much much. You don’t burn up much energy. You can listen to the Red Sox. This is lazy man’s kayak fishing for striped bass. You get to kick back and relax until the big one hits with the force of a jackhammer.

Well, you can do kayak fish for striped bass like this; make the drive to Gloucester and you’ll be right in the head to launch with high hopes for what typically happens once you paddle down through Gloucester Harbor’s transient mooring area towards Pancake Ground and the placid shore of Niles Beach. It’s not infrequent that striped bass kayak fisherman take a pair or more of 34″ keeper striped bass here in less than an hour.

Choose as your target, if you’re off Niles Beach, the seine net, marked with yellow highflier flags, that the local commercial fisherman set out off Niles Beach beach each fall to haul in commercial mackerel. Do that and you will do alright for sure. Work the equation: an area this thick with mackerel that it attacts commercial fishermen is also going to attract very large striped bass 32″ long and longer.

It’s a good tactic to paddle a kayak to this section of outer Gloucester Harbor e from the Dogbar Breakwater and lighthouse at Eastern Point, under the nose of the Coast Guard station. There’s an Audubon reserve here, where you can park for $5. At the far end of the breakwater lies the 4-second red flasher buoy that marks the entrance to outer Gloucesterharbor. Large striped bass pass the buoy and breakwater on their way into Gloucester harbor and the Blyman Canal at the Annisquam River.

Try setting up first along the edge of the channel that runs from the breakwater into inner Gloucester harbor. Let the kayak drift for a while, to see how well the light southwesterly wind pushes you along. Then let your expectations rise as drift over the Pancake Ground’s 30′-deep water just off Ten Pound Island and its big ring of submerged boulder fields. The big fish are here. Lift your paddle from the water, store it in the cockpit, and let the wind push you down through the outer harbor’s straits towards the narrows where outer Gloucester harbor gives way to inner Gloucester harbor and its busy commercial waterfront.

Check the NOAA chart. Babson Ledge and the channel that splinters off for the tidal rip at Blynman Canal and Annisquam River lay off to port. Dead ahead, the bifurcating North and South Channels that provide transit to inner Gloucester harbor. Watch Gloucester’s commercial fishing boats as they make their way in to offload their catch at the fish brokers by the cold storage plants, the huge herring plant, and the gill-net and lobster boat finger docks at the Jodrey state fish pier.