Massachusetts Kayak Fishing: Wareham and Buzzards Bay, Cape Cod Inshore Areas for Striped Bass, Bluefish and Fluke

The head of Buzzards Bay's tides tend to attract fluke, especially around the jetties and rocky outcroppings which fringe the approach to the Cape Cod canal by the Manashee Flats, Green Gables and Buttermilk Bay. Likewise the numerous back marshes off Wings Neck and Little Harbor with their tidal flats.

The choppy warm-water oases here have much to recommend them to kayak fishermen who want a taste of fishing Cape Cod and the islands without having to enture weekend traffic between Memorial and Labor Day.

Parking at the barrier beach at Indian Neck and Great Neck in Wareham is limited to town residents between late June and Labor Day. But the Bay's sand bars, flats, rocks, and seawalls are all accessible launching from paved ramps near the Narrows, Cromeset Neck, and the Cohasset Narrows area of Buzzards Bay just below Buttermilk Bay.

The area also offers good access early in season to local freshwater ponds and streams which dapple the sandy landscape. Their groves of pine trees, and the ponds, extend towards Plymouth and Myles Standish state forest, many with short portages in between.

The Sand Spit, off Little Harbor, splits the head Buzzards Bay off from the Hog Island channel approach tp the Cape Cod canal's west wend. The Spit is heavily structured along its edges: rocky outcroppings, submerged obstructions and shifting sandbars whose edges give way to the channel's thirty-feet deep dredged big-ship passageway.

The spit's groin, where it juts out from Great Neck, forms a shallow embayment that fills with sand eel bait and, oftentimes, large schools of bluefish.

Similarly, the point at the tip of the barrier beach off Little Harbor, accessible by way of a thin channel that hugs Indian Neck's southern shoreline and shellfish grants in the harbor's back marshes, contains tidal bank which warps the tides, creating a rip and hot spot. The tiny channel gives way to a large inland marsh large enough for a kayak when the tide is up. Large stripers, up to 36", gather back here to feed on small crustaceans.

Early season striper fishing can be quite good here, while wade-fishing the large area of flats off Little Harbor is one way to kayak fish the area if you tow kayak tow behind you on a light bow painter. Striped bass nose into the shallows to feed on tautog eggs. Effective gear here are poppers, 5-1/2" broken-back rebels, the usual assortment of squid, sand eels, or chub imitations, or the real thing.

There are numerous bait shops in the area -- good convenience, considering that sometimes even the most seasoned local who sets bait pots sometimes manages to trap little form the indigenous local bait biomass.

If you want more info on kayak fishing the Cape Cod area, have a look at the numerous kayak fishing and kayak fishing maps, including put-ins and caution areas, available for roughly $3.75 each from Massachusetts Kayak Fishing Maps.