Kayaking and Kayak Fishing Gloucester, Massachusetts Inner and Outer Harbor

Hi sea kayakers and kayak fishermen. Welcome to another installment of Notes from a Local, your online audio resource for tips, pointers and how-to's for sea kayakers and kayak fishermen around the world. I'm your host, Dave Williams, writing on the web via Twitter at SeaKayak. Today, the inner and outer harbors of Gloucester Massachusetts.

Gloucester Harbor is divided in two: the inner, compact, busy, and lively with commercial fishing boats moving in and out of port for maintenance and repair or to offload their catch. The outer harbor, distinct, wide-open and ringed by rocky shorelines, headlands and granite points, proves the city's waterway to Massachusetts Bay and the open ocean. Boat traffic here is orderly, and follows a small handful of transit routes marked by navigational buoys

Both harbors are worth exploring, particularly if you're a kayak fisherman looking to target striped bass or a free-diver in a kayak looking to snorkel for lobsters in the shallows of the outer harbor close to shore. As for the sea kayaker, both harbors present sights and sounds of a working commercial fishing port. Long and short, either harbor is worth exploring, regardless of whether you prefer paddling a shorter sit-on-top kayak or full-length ocean-going sea kayak.

Let's start with the outer harbor's western shores, a bold, pink granite area studded with submerged boulder fields that slant down towards submerged ledges and rock-strewn mudflats. Placenames here include Stage Fort Park, Freshwater Cove, the northern shores of Magnolia and stately overlooks at Hammond Castle, and finally that bold, dramatic outcropping with its related submerged ledge, Norman's Woe, which lies opposite the Eastern Point and the dogbar breakwater, the gateway to Gloucester Harbor..

In the northernmost corner of the outer harbor, adjacent to the city's harbor promenade, known as the Boulevard, you'll find the cut bridge which connects West to downtown Gloucester. Also known as the Blynman Bridge, this creaking, groaning steel bridge opens by splitting at the middle and elevating skyward. It les over the swift tidal chute through which the waters of the Annisquam River flow from Gloucester to Ipswich Bay six miles to the north. It's here, at the cut bridge and Stacy Boulevard, that you'll find man at the wheel statue, where local clergy bless the fishing fleet each year and a centopath lists the names of the all the Gloucester fishermen lost at sea since the city first established itself as a fishing port. Read the centopath and you'll see how the nationalities of local fishermen changed over the generations: from Englishmen to Scandinavians to Irishmen to finally the Portuguese and Italian fisherman who came to dominate the fishing industry shortly at the end of the 19^th century.

On the other northeast side of the outer harbor, from Ten Pound Island and Rocky Neck, harbor lies the Fort neighborhood, Pavilion Beach (site of the greasy pole contest held in June during the St. Peter's Fiesta), the Gloucester Paint Factory, and finally the thin and sandy shores of placid Niles Beach which lead to Eastern Point. You also find on Ten Pound Island a small beach to land on, a lighthouse, and a good place to take a lunch break from fishing, lobstering and exploring. The island lies at the entrance to the inner harbor: its Coast Guard station, concrete fish piers, massive, blank-faced deep freeze plants, boat repair yards, commercial fishing boat docks and the recreational boatyards and ice and fuel docks.

It's here, at the inner harbor, that the kayaker and kayak fisherman will find Rocky Neck, Cripple Cove, the State Fish Pier and the dockage and mooring areas for much of the Gloucester fishing fleet. The paddling here is scenic and, despite the bustle of commercial fishing boats, provides good striped bass fishing, especially at the rocky areas adjacent to the State Fish Pier and the Americold fish wharves. Once you're done here, exit the inner harbor, leaving Ten Pound Island to port, and paddle to exit the outer harbor at ] Eastern Point, at the far southeast end of the outer harbor.

To gain an overview of the area, it's worth taking time to zoom in and out of the inner and outer harbors with Google Earth. Switch between satellite and map views to gain a sense of the two harbors' landmarks and waters and the town's main roads and access points to routes 95 and 128. Just plug in the Gloucester Harbor, Massachusetts in the Google Earth search bar, then wait for Google Earth to load. Take care to look for Stacy Boulevard, Gloucester High School's boat ramp on the banks of the Annisquam River, and the four beaches of the outer harbor: Cressy's and Half Moon at Stage Fort Park, Pavilion at Stacy Boulevard, and Niles and Raymond at Eastern Point.

There are three primary spots for launching a kayak into Gloucester Harbor. The most convenient, due to the lax parking restrictions, is Pavilion Beach. In the off-season, use Niles Beach near Eastern Point. And for access year-round, but requiring an easy portage down a ramp to a town-owned dock, try Cripple Cove off East Main Street. And be sure to look for Gloucester's waterfront breakfast joints and bait and tackle shops, among them Zeke's Place and Lee's for breakfast, Three Lanterns, Winchester Fishing Company, and the state fish pier wholesalers for respectively, bait and tackle or bait alone.

Keep in mind that inner and outer Gloucester harbor are busy areas, especially during the summer. In addition to recreational boating traffic transiting the two channels that serve this fishing port from the Annisquam River and Eastern Point, keep in mind that you'll often have to cross channels that carry whalewatch and party boat traffic, transits used by Coast Guard crews on routine or emergency patrol, the city's three huge herring boats, a whole fleet of smaller commercial fishing boats, recreational powerboats, and any number of small sailboats.

To best ensure that you have safe, open water to yourself, try to restrict your paddling to the outer harbor's western and eastern shores -- in other words, the shore from Stage Fort Park to Hammond Castle, on the western side of the harbor, and those from Ten Pound Island to the mooring area and breakwater at Eastern Point, along on the eastern shore e harbor.

As for the inner harbor, a busy and congested working port, stick to the sides of the harbor's edges keeping an eye out at for blind corners around waterfront businesses like Cape Pond Ice, the Gloucester Marine Railways and the landing docks for the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction. Recreational powerboats, fishing day boats and larger offshore fishing boats lurk in these areas offloading catch, stocking up on ice and fuel, or nosing their way into repair and haul-out facilities for maintenance and upkeep.