Fish the Joppa Flats for Striped Bass This Summer at Newburyport, Ma

CSO Joppa's Flats Near the Mouth of the Merrimack River Are One of the More Productive Flats Areas in Massachusetts

Some of Massachusetts's most fertile striped bass fishing grounds lie tucked away in shallows of the state's sand flats, among them the flats at Duxbury Bay, off Chatham, and the flats on the western shores of Monomoy Island.

Here's a look at one further north, near the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border, where Newburyport's Joppa Flats at the tidal Merrimack River flatten towards Plum Island. The area is easy to access for anglers in small boats, and is typically productive during the fall and spring runs.

For schools of striped bass thick enough that recreational anglers quickly develop a case of striper thumb, the Joppa fishery lies just outside the tidal marshes which connect downtown Newburyport to the jumbled cheek-by-jowl overdevelopment of otherwise wildlife-refuge preserved Plum Island.

The flats extend along the western edges of the Merrimack River's lower waters, east of the Custom House Maritime Museum and running southeast along Water Street to the Plum Island Turnpike, Woodbridge Island and Plumbush. Brushed by heavy deepwater tides that exit the river at Plum Island Point, Joppa is a good place for the beginning kayak angler, tin-skiffer or fly fisherman to try his hand.

At lower tides flats nearly triple in size, forming pools of water over sticky mud and mussel-beds. The flats are Massachusetts' most northerly shallow-water fishing area, and the last estuarine waterway before the vast muddy wilds of tidal Great Bay, in New Hampshire.

Forming the ballooned pool at the mouth of the Merrimack River, the flats lie adjacent to estuarine marshes so vast they border or form the borders of eight towns south and west of the River.