In The East: Paddling Monomoy Island

February-March 2006

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by Adam Bolonsky

Monomoy Island off Chatham, Massachusetts, is a national wildlife refuge and a barrier island with a haunting and desolate aspect. Delicate and windswept, it was deposited here by glaciers and elongated into an arm by littoral drift. The steeply angled berms of its seaward face absorb the force of swell rumbling in from offshore with tremendous violence.

Our plan is this: after portaging the south island’s outermost edge, Leslie, Kevin and I will bang upwind through the rough water and into the deeper waters west. High winds are forecast and rule number one in wind is to paddle upwind first. Our upwind leg will take us past the dun-colored Powder Hole and then the fish weir, the cedar-and-net fence which juts out of Monomoy’s side like a scraggy tree limb. The weir collects baitfish, and where there are baitfish, there are pelagic sportfish—bluefish, striped bass, bonito. After we paddle the weir area, we’ll surf downwind to ride the incoming tide over the sandbars.

We have chosen Monomoy’s west side because Monomoy’s eastern shores, from Morris Island to the South Beach channel, are hemmed in on one side by desolate beaches and long dunes on the other. Plus, many daytrippers ferry there in powerboats to see the gray seals that frequent that stretch.

I’ve always found Monomoy’s western waters, their thin grass islands and sprawling offshore sandbars, to be far more compelling, especially when Cape Cod’s unique light lays a blurry scrim over them. Your sense of size and distance get mightily messed up here. You mistake a seabird on the flats for the mast of a ship, a sandbar for an island. Then a wave rolls past or the light changes and the bird or cordgrass disappear. The color of the water changes, suggesting first the cobalt of the south Pacific, now the yellow of a freshwater pond. It’s all intensified by polarized sunglasses, and polarized sunglasses are what I’m wearing, because loveliness aside, my real agenda here is to catch sight of the mummichogs, sandeels and chubbs which flit about in search of copepods. When these species run in shallow water, large fish follow.

So the western flats it is. We set up a course of 220 magnetic, using a tower on the mainland and a sandbar offshore for ranges. Presently the fog and mist burn off, the horizon clears, and now we see the whitecaps building to the south.

As we slog upwind, a school of striped bass darts past and the day starts to turn dry and hot. Eventually we land on the bar which separates Monomoy from its flats, and from there to the vast, swirling waters of Nantucket Sound. As we tuck into our calzones, the wind begins to spank in. The chop mounts and steepens. One of my assurances to Kevin had been that by foregoing the seals and sea swell on the eastern shore, we’d paddle here in chop so tall it would break over our heads. That had been hyperbole then, but not now, from the looks of it.

“You’ll like it out there, Kevin,” Leslie says, wriggling into her sprayskirt and tightening her PFD. “The water really gets rough.”

I keep glancing southwest, towards the deep water, for signs of the fish which draw me here. I see a school surface and my stomach does a backflip. Terns tumble down from the sky and begin to hover over and dive at the baitspray the fish have driven to the surface. The terns look like snow swirling around in the wind. More fish surface. Now the water erupts and the birds lift off the surface.

Bluefish. They bite anything, including birds. Seabirds know this.

Famed Monomoy Island’s contours, shores and passages change from year to year and with each passing storm. The recent break in the island has fast moving currents and populations of grey seals, striped bass, bluefish and bonito tuna. (Digital rendering by Kurt Klinzing.).

We re-launch and our route takes us into the wind and chop. It thumps against our port bows. It’s difficult to force a kayak to weather in conditions like this, with both wind and chop bulldozing your bow, resisting the turning force of your sweep stroke. Drop your skeg too much and it’s only worse. I lift my skeg and set up my fishing gear while Leslie and Kevin begin to deal with a Nantucket Sound classic: heaving chop rolling down the faces of deep rollers formed by the Sound’s prevailing winds. I cast a metal lure towards the surfaced bluefish. Immediately one seizes my lure, yanks the leader downward, then thrashes to the surface before sounding and bursting back up into the air again. The fish shakes its head and spits the lure. Immediately another bluefish takes the lure and scuds across the surface with it.

I’ve always held that sea kayak fishing is a surefire way to become a more skilled, intuitive paddler. Off Monomoy, for example, when you fish from a kayak you inevitably find yourself bashed by swell, chop and wind. As you twist, turn and swivel within your cockpit to face fish that first streak from one end of your kayak to the other, then around it, then beneath it, then off again, you have to stay balanced. And since you need your hands to hold your fishing gear, your paddle’s not in them. It’s an afterthought either bungied to the foredeck or floating on a tether. You have no choice but to stabilize your kayak with your knees and hips.

I bring the bluefish close enough to land it, bracing the kayak with the undersides of the foredeck by using one knee and hip, then the other, first to starboard, now to port. I like to fish and I like even better to eat fresh fish. So if balancing my kayak without my paddle is the price I have to pay while reaching into the water to grab a fish by the tail, well, here’s my paddle and my wallet.

I see Kevin setting up to fish a school off his stern. His kayak lies precariously parallel to the swell’s troughs and swells, his hull rising and falling as the deck rolls from gunwale to gunwale when chop breaks against the sheer. He’s setting up to cast backwards, so much unlike the reassuring bow-to, stern-to position in which paddlers feel comfortable. And from the look on Kevin’s face, this is the first time he’s sat in a kayak lying parallel to rough water. A swell passes beneath him and I see him thrust his hip down against it. He casts. The lure splashes in the water. His rod bends. Leslie whoops. His rod arcs, twists, then twists back, and now Kevin is sitting sideways as a bluefish streaks off his stern, arcs, and races back towards the bow before reversing direction. Kevin looks like a man wobbling on a barstool trying to swat flies behind him. When finally he hoists the struggling fish from the water, he looks up with an expression of ‘now what?’

The bluefish is about the size of a small dog.

“Put it on the sprayskirt!” I yell. “Keep your hands AWAY from its head! You’ll get bit!” Bluefish look you in the eye as they bounce around on your foredeck, and if you get bit, you’ll need stitches more often than not.

Bluefish have a reputation in New England for oily fishiness, but in fact, they are delicious. You just have to be sure to eat them fresh. We smear the fillets with mayonnaise, wrap them in tinfoil and grill them. Kevin’s grin is enormous.

Next day, his hips loose, his boldness grand, Kevin proves to be the fastest, loosest, most relaxed paddler in rough waters off Sandy Neck. Some of his ease is due to his athleticism, yet his fluid, relaxed smoothness as we bash around also has to do with his having dealt with the big fish in rougher waters the day before. Float around admiring grey seals at Monomoy and all you do is sit there. Catch bluefish from a sea kayak, however, and your kayak becomes much more than a floating lounge chair. It becomes a skinny log that you have to figure out how to balance with your legs and feet and hips.

Marine adventures take us to exotic places, and the best ones teach us the exotic skills of how to keep a sea kayak right side up. Learn to balance your kayak without your paddle, and you’re ready for onwater adventures anywhere, regardless of how rough it gets or how fierce may be the delicious fish which swim within.

© Adam Bolonsky is a New England sea kayaking instructor and sea kayak fishing guide based in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Adam@WaveLengthMagazine.com