Massachusetts Striper Fishing: Inshore Manchester, Massachusetts

Above: King Island, Alaska native lands and prepares to dress his catch of a seal in the ice floes. Seasonal icepack renders kayaking in the area inshore during some seasons, offshore during others. Alaska State Archives photo.

Manchester, Massachusetts’ Chubb Island, Misery Island and West Beach

Chubb Island's shallows and perimeter are a scenic spot you'll pass on the way to West Beach from inner Manchester harbor. Heavily vegetated, Chubb is imprinted with the same signatures that mark all of the other islands (nearly a dozen) of nearby Salem Sound. Round, steep-sided, difficult to land on, Chubb Island is a lovely, magical spot close to shore.

Inland of the island, about two hundred yards to the northwest, lies empty shoreline broken by a creek which leads inland to marshes bisected by the rail line that connects Boston to Manchester, Gloucester and Rockport. (The rail line also serves Lynn, Beverly, Beverly Farms, Montserrat and other towns north of Boston, making the North Shore home to many downtown Boston office workers.)

There are few warnings or caveats for Chubb Island other than a reminder to be circumspect if you make the trip in a gusty northwest wind from the island to the Misery Islands about a half-mile offshore. The trip out will be fast, easy, quick, with a lively tail wind and nice chop pushing you along. The trip back can prove quite challenging, if you're not in good physical condition and are short of roughwater paddling skills. It’s a trip to consider carefully: if after paddling to the Misery Islands you take a break on the islands, you won't know how much the wind has increased until you’ve emerged from the islands’ sheltered coves. Northwest winds can pose a considerable challenge here to the inexperienced. Northwesterlies blow offshor, and if you get into trouble, that’s where you’re going to end up: offshore.

West Beach, about a quarter mile west of Chubb Island, can be a good place to put in during the fall, when the parking lot’s regulations are rarely enforced. Keep in mind that it's a long carry from the West Beach parking lot to the water. You'll want a friend or kayak cart to help make the carry easier.

An unnamed beach inshore and northwest of Chubb Island makes for a good place to land and stretch your legs. The best landing is at the westerly end of the unnamed beach, near the train tracks.

Chubb Island location:
Lat 42°33'38.12"N
Long 70°47'50.57"W

copyright 2009 Just Another Guy Named Dave
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Striper Fishing Misery Islands and West Beach, Manchester, Ma.

Above: If the stripers aren't biting off Manchester, Ma. you can always hope to come across a school of bluefish. Bleed the fish after capture and they won't go bad in the hatch. Bluefish smoke well.

Manchester, Massachusetts's southeastern shores hold productive offshore rock clusters, ledges, submerged boulders and islands attractive to stripers, bluefish, pollock and cod.

The advantages to the area several. Manchester is easy to get to from state highway routes 127 and 128, the latter a major beltway, the former a lovely scenic route that winds its way through Cape Ann villages. Just as important, the fishing is good on species ranging from migratory pelagics to groundfish.

A scant 4 miles from Gloucester, Massachusetts, Manchester's Misery Islands and West Beach lie near other good fishing areas: Magnolia's Kettle Island and Egg Rocks' ledges.

The area is worth a look by any kayak fisherman interested in fishing little-publicized waters.

Great Misery Island's Cocktail Cove
A good place to duck in for a break or to escape rough weather. The beach is rocky and rather steep.

During the warmer months the island is patrolled by Trustees of Reservations rangers who will ask for a Trustees membership card or collect the nominal visitors fee.

The cove doesn't produce much in the way of fishing. But from the outer edge of the cove north, towards Chubb Island and West, Beach, you can have good days for bluefish. If you have the patience to stillfish, flounder fishing is good here in the late spring.

Little Misery Island
A stones and pebbles beach landing. Be wary of the large steel hull wreck at low tide. The landing is also patrolled by Trustees of Reservations rangers who paddle over from Great Misery. You'll need a Trustees membership card or will be asked to pay a nomial visitors fee.

The exit channel from the island that runs almost due east between the landing and Great Misery can get pretty rough. If the seas are up, take care when heading out in an easterly direction. The high bluff on south side of the island has a fine view of outer Salem Sound and Bakers Island.
West Beach
Parking here is always a question. The parking area is privately owned, yet its restrictions are not always enforced during the off season. At low tide the carry from the lot to the water can run about fifty yards. Dumping surf rarely forms here. This is a fine put-in for Manchester's Misery Islands and the waters beyond.

Chubb Island
An easy get-to from West Beach if you feel comfortable parking in West Beach's private lot during the off-season.

While oftentimes productive for striped bass early and late in the season, Chubb Island is best regarded as the gateway to flounder fishing the sandy bottom that extends from Chubb Isalnd to the Misery Islands.

The unnamed beach just inshore, northeast of Chubb, makes a find landing area. The easiest landing there is on the westerly end of the beach, near where the train tracks pass.

Massachusetts Striped Bass Fishing: Great Brewster Island, Boston Harbor

Massachusetts Striped Bass Fishing: Great Brewster Island, Boston Harbor, Massachusetts

Striped bass fishermen looking for keeper striped bass 28"-plus in waters close to structure deep and shallow, roiled with whitewater swell and subject to good current, do well to fish outer Boston Harbor's Great Brewster Island an hour south of the somewhat better-known Massachusetts kayak fishing areas of Gloucester, Rockport, Ipswich and Essex, all located along Cape Ann.

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(Note: if you choose to read more, the link above will take you to my outdoors writing page at Associated Content. If you prefer, you can read my AC kayak fishing feed there instead.)

Read the North American Kayak Fishing feed at Associated Content.

Kayak Fishing Long ago and far away

Submersible VHF Radios/Part 1

Few boaters take electronics more seriously than fishermen, so you'd understand why fishing glossies keep their readers up-to-date on the latest offerings from marine VHF radio and GPS manufacturers.

Here's a relatively new marine VHF that's recently gone on sale at Amazon: the Standard Horizon HX500S , a waterproof and fully submersible 5-watt VHF. It costs about $150 (see link at right; you need to poke around the listing page to find the lower price) and includes a charger and drop-in cradle:

You can also buy it in black, with a li-ion, battery, for roughly the same price.

One caveat is that the radio is made by Standard Horizon, a company whose quality control has been spotty over the years. Some models were plagued by leaky gaskets, others by poor soldering.

About five years ago I helped organize a group buy of VHF radios for an East Coast (US) organization. All told we bought twenty Standard Horizon HX 350's that yielded a warranty return rate of about 40%.

In other words, eight radios had to be returned due to manufacturing defects. A few were replaced on warranty three and four times.

Bad design by the company. But Standard stood by their warranty and patiently replaced each radio as it crapped out.

The has two features to recommend it out of the box, at least to my eye: a (no memory problems, meaning that the battery doesn't get stuck on a certain recharge capacity) and a built-in LED strobe programmed to flash SOS.

I still use a Standard HX150, big as a housebrick and almost as heavy, that I bought on clearance ten years ago from my local West Marine. The radio still works fine, cracks in its case and scratches on its LED screen notwithstanding.

If you want to buy a radio that's just as cheap as that radio was, here's a real good deal: $72 for the Standard Horizon HX270:



If you don't have a VHF radio yet and are curious about their use, see links below for audio files edited and transcribed from the US Coast Guard's media site. The files open a door on what VHF radio communications sound like, particularly on distress channel 16:
mayday
grounded vessel's call is picked up by two Coast Guard stations
scuba mayday
a fatality: caller's understandable panic garbles communications
mayday
sinking vessel gives broad local descriptors of its location
pan-pan
caller is switched to channel 22a by the Coast Guard
false distress call
caller was arrested, indicted, fined and jailed
VHF radio's utility in paddllers' rescue by a Coast Guard helicopter

copyright 2009 Just Another Guy Named Dave