Become a Better Sea Kayaker by Kayak Fishing the Shallows of Sandy Neck, Cape Cod

Our upwind leg out of Barnstable Harbor, on Cape Cod, Ma., will take us past the end of Sandy Neck, then into the shoals which spread away from Barnstable and Sandwich like enormous sacks of sand. Those shoals attract baitfish. And where there are baitfish on Cape Cod, there are striped bass and bluefish.

Partially a wildlife refuge loaded with fish, mostly a barrier island whose affect is haunting and desolate, the Cape's Sandy Neck is long and delicate and windswept. Deposited in Cape Cod Bay by glaciation and elongated into an arm by littoral drift, the Neck's shoals absorb groundswell rumbling in with great violence during the winter, and hold striped bass and bluefish from June and October.

We've chosen the Neck for several reasons. Juliana and I consider Barnstable Harbor itself to be an over-rated kayaking area. You're hemmed in on one side by the beach, on the other by mudflats. And although seals sometimes summer there -- puppy-faced little cuties with heads the diameter of pie plates -- spend an afternoon in the harbor's waters and it's seen one seal seen them all. Moreover, powerboats crowd the channel on weekends; meanshile while the north side of the Neck overloking Cape Cod Bay as far as Wellfleet and Truro lies as empty as a school playground after recess.

Juliana and I make short work of Paul's interest in the harbor.

"Think Disneyland," Juliana says.

"With motorboats," I add.

I find Sandy Neck's north and east waters, its sprawling shoals, to be more compelling, especially when Cape Cod Bay's unique light lays over them a blurry scrim. You mistake a seabird on the flats for the mast of a ship, a sandbar for an island. Then a wave rolls past and bird and sandbar disappear. Presently the color of the water shifts: first blue, then yellow, then blue again. Our plan is to comb from the tangles of eel grass any sandeels which flit around the shoals in search of copepods. Find the former and soon we'll find striped bass, summer flounder or bluefish.