Kayak Fishing Browns Bank Off Plymouth, MA for Striped Bass and Bluefish

The plan was this. After rounding Long Beach we'd bang upwind west of Browns Bank, fish the bank, then surf the point to ride the tide home. There was a lively wind forecast, and first rule in winds over ten knots is to paddle the upwind leg first.

Browns Bank is a large shoal a quarter a mile off Plymouth, Ma. whose affect and atmosphere when the tide is out is haunting and desolate. Delicate and waveswept, the shoal, like those off Chatham and Wellfleet, was deposited here by glaciation several thousand years ago and has been shaped by storms and tides since. Its seaward-facing edges absorb the pounding of groundswell which rumbles in over the bank with percussive violence during storms. Come summer calms the shoal rebuilds itself. Its several-dozen acre area is channeled by deep guzzles and trenches that typically hold striped bass and bluefish in season.

The upwind leg took us past the Bug Light, the Cowyard and dun-colored Saquish, with its tidal rip, which separates Browns Bank and Plymouth from Duxbury Bay and Clarks Island. Saquish's rip often holds of lots fish and can a fine place to try. But since its waters aren't as far offshorre as Browns, we'd already decided to skip it.

Besides, nearby Kingston's and Jones River's flats presented viable flatsfishing options should Browns prove too rough to fish. A sprawling offshore shallows, the fish at Browns on lower tides are hemmed in by mud flats on one side, eel grass on the other. Then deep water. Stripers summer there- thousand-member schools whose feeds look like water boiling - providing excitement and lots of keepers 28"-plus. The tumult and baitspray of schools feeding is jaw-dropping to watch. You essentially watch schools of fish control baitfish hemmed in by a corral made of sand.