Summer Tactics for Saltwater Fishing in Massachusetts

After spring's striper blitzes along Cape Ann and the South Shore of Massachusetts begin to calm down, with fewer surface-breaking schools on the surface and flocks of birds to mark them, you'll have to work a little harder if you're looking for fish off spots like Manchester, Boston, Cape Ann and the South Shore. The stripers, well-fed if not gorged, have settled into their summer homes, and now have to be sought out rather than run after.

Traditionally called the summer doldrums, when anglers change tactics and lures from spincasting sluggos and kastmasters and shads to trolling tubes-and-worms, midsummer salwter fishing in Massachusetts can be a discouraging time of year if you don't know what you're doing.

Here's where to beat the doldrums in areas that consistently provides good fishing during tactic-switch time: the shores that lie between Manchester's House and Ram Islands, and the shores of Magnolia from Kettle Island to Norman's Woe at the mouth of outer Gloucester Harbor. These are waters anglers in fast kayaks or small powerboats can reach from any number of public ramps, including the ramp behind Gloucester High School, the ramp behind the police station in Manchester, numerous landings in Salem and Beverly, and Riverhead Landing in Marblehead.

These waters, north and east of Salem Sound, are craggy and island-studded and hold abrupt drop-offs off their islands' shores. Some of the dropoffs fall twenty feet or more, falling away from clefts and trenches in the islands that extend far out underwater.