Gary Nickerson
May 2007

This past weekend, Carol, Ted and I took a day trip to kayak the Nissequoque River on Long Island. The Nissequoque is one of four rivers on Long Island, about an hour and 15 minutes drive from Manhattan.  It runs from the Long Island Sound south to Smithtown, where the navigable part of the River ends at two old mill dams.  It is interesting because it travels through three ecosystems, with a tidal marsh in the north and woodlands in the south.

Some years ago the river was not very pleasant, but through grassroots and county efforts, it has been cleaned up considerably and is now a designated fishing river.  The northernmost section is bordered by housing – sparsely on the east and more densely on the west sides.  However, much of the river runs through more sparsely populated lands and protected woodlands.   The Long Island Green Belt trail, running from the Long Island Sound to the South Shore starts along the Nissequoque.

The river itself flows north from below Smithtown, where it is fed by fresh water ponds and springs.  At this end, the river is in a red maple-black gum swamp, then through a freshwater tidal marsh, a brackish tidal marsh, and finally ends in salt water at the Sound end.  It supports a wide range of aquatic life, including several kinds of clams, oysters, and turtles, and is the nursery or feeding ground for trout, stripped bass, bluefish, winter flounder, black fish and other fish.  Bird life includes Canada geese, American black ducks, swans, mallard ducks, for which it is the wintering ground,and, in the summer, osprey.  It is also a stopover point for a variety of migrating birds in the spring and fall.

With cold weather lasting almost up to the day we hit the water, peeling off our fleeces and long sleeved shirts and putting on suntan lotion made spring real.  It was clear, from the large number of boats still on the trailers that we were going to be lucky in having few boats on the river . . . and this proved true throughout the day.

We put in at the Bluff, a high spot near the confluence of the Nissequoque and the Long Island Sound, a little after noon and traveled south with the incoming tide.  The Nissequoque, at this point, is wide and, with the tide still low, small islets were visible along the way.  We could see clams and oysters just above the low water line.  The gathering of birds on some islets made us think of this as sushi bars for birds.

In this part of the river, we saw mostly Canada geese and some cormorants.  One group of about a dozen cormorants took off in a rather spectacular show of wing-flapping as we approached. The geese seemed much more blasé about our presence.  As we made our way further south we saw mallard ducks, swans, some red-winged blackbirds and other birds I didn’t recognize.

There was virtually no breeze and the water was almost glass smooth.  The incoming tide gave us a real boost, though it was only noticeable when we stopped paddling.  I think Ted, who had never been in a kayak, was a little skeptical at first, but not very far down the river he was talking about buying one.

As we moved south, we glided through an area with more wooded shores but with many islets in the river itself.  Going around one we went aground and had to circle back to go another way.  Ted saw a large turtle, about 1 ½ feet in length that Carol and I were not quick enough to glimpse.