Striper, Groundfish and Bluefish Fishing

One North Shore Massachusetts fishing area frequently overlooked by anglers whose cars are locked on autopilot for the Cape Cod Canal are the waters of eastern and offshore Salem Sound, between Marblehead's Tinkers Island, Bakers Island, off Manchester, and the inland waters towards Routes 128 and 62.

Covering roughly 12 square miles, the Sound is studded with more than a dozen islands, countless ledges and dry rock clusters, and half a dozen sandy beach fisheries that provide consistently good fishing on pelagics, such as striped bass and bluefish, and on groundfish, such as flounder and cod. It's a fine area for anglers who fish from kayaks, tin skiffs, whalers and other small boats.

Several factors contribute to the area's productiveness. For starters, the Sound is the largest dent Ice-Age architectonics made in the Massachusetts coastline when glaciers made their way between Cape Cod and Stellwaggen Bank's northernmost corner off Gloucester.

The Sound presents to the open ocean a gigantic funnel whose mouth draws into its waters fish and forage from Massachusetts Bay, rendering the sound a perennial summer layover spot for striped bass migrating from the mid-Atlantic coastline to the waters of Massachusetts, New Hampsire and Maine.

Second, the Sound's tides run fairly hard over aces of structure. Meanwhile, a consistent offshore swell breaks and lifts into suspension baitfish nosing around the Sound's islands, ledges, inlets, beaches, shoals.

Here are highlights of the area.

Because I fish from a small boat -- a seakayak narrow but seaworthy -- two areas I favor are the flats off the asphalt ramp at the Jubilee Yacht Club, on Water Street in Beverly, from whose public ramp you can practically hit, as you park, the channel's red nun with your front bumper. A second carry-in launch lies just a few minutes north, off Route 127, about a mile before Lynn Park Beach on the right.