Jamaica Bay Fishing JournalJamaica Bay, New York

Guide · November 5, 2026

The Sheepshead Bay Fleet and Jamaica Bay Access

Where the open boats leave, where the public piers are, and which official pages to read before you drive.

By Jamaica Bay Fishing Journal editors

Most of the open boats people mean when they say "Jamaica Bay party boat" do not leave from a dock in the middle of the bay. They leave from the Sheepshead Bay piers, on Emmons Avenue in Brooklyn, and run through Rockaway Inlet to the bay, the beaches and the ocean. This guide is about those piers, the one National Park Service pier inside the bay, and what the official pages actually say. The boats themselves are in the directory.

The piers on Emmons Avenue

NYC Parks puts the Sheepshead Bay Piers on Emmons Avenue between Ocean Avenue and East 26th Street. The historical sign posted for the park says the city built the concrete piers in 1936, that Parks took them over in 1994, and that the first nine piers berth charter fishing boats. Pier 10, on that sign, is for excursion vessels.

The sign also says daily fishing trips leave from here, mornings, middays and evenings, and that people fish from the piers themselves. It does not list the boats. Each boat publishes its own pier number. On Nov. 5, 2026, Marilyn Jean Fishing's site said Pier 6 at 2200 Emmons Avenue, and Sea Queen VII's site said Pier 5 at 2250 Emmons Avenue. Pier numbers move when a dock is closed. Read the boat's page the day you go.

Tickets, fares and what is biting are the boat's to post. We don't repeat them here.

A charter that leaves from the bay itself

Not every trip starts on Emmons Avenue. Rockfish Charters' site says its spring and fall striped bass trips leave from the Old Mill Yacht Club, 16315 Cross Bay Boulevard, Howard Beach, and that Jamaica Bay is one of the waters it fishes. The same site says the summer tuna season leaves from Center Moriches, about 60 miles east, and that you should not park in the yacht club lot. If you book that boat, ask which port is on the confirmation.

Canarsie Pier

Inside the bay, Canarsie Pier is a Gateway National Recreation Area fishing pier. The Park Service page, last updated June 14, 2021, says the pier is open daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., cars from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., and that it has a parking lot, restrooms, a picnic area, a playground and a kayak launch. Drivers are pointed to Belt Parkway exit 13. The train direction on that page is the L to Rockaway Parkway, then the B42 bus.

That page is four years old as of this writing. Hours and transit can change. Open it before you go.

Gateway's separate fishing page is the current one for passes. It says saltwater fishing is the only fishing allowed in the park, points New York anglers at the state marine registry, and explains the fishing access pass used for after-hours parking at designated lots. It says a permit is not required during regular hours at Canarsie Pier. Other Jamaica Bay lots, including spots at Floyd Bennett Field, Riis Landing, Fort Tilden and Breezy Point, are on the pass list. Our rules guide covers how that pass sits next to the state registry.

Tides

The tide table on this site is NOAA station 8517756, Kingsborough, Sheepshead Bay, the prediction station on the harbor the boats leave from. Canarsie has its own station, 8517381. Don't use the Sheepshead Bay times as if they were the pier inside the bay. Both stations returned high and low predictions when we checked the NOAA data API on Nov. 5, 2026.

What this guide leaves out

We did not walk the fleet and write down every boat on every pier. Boats that we could not open on their own website are not in the directory, even if a shop or a forum mentions them. If you run one, the contact page is how it gets added.

How we compiled this. NYC Parks' Sheepshead Bay Piers page, the National Park Service pages for Canarsie Pier and for fishing at Gateway, and the boat sites named above, as they read on Nov. 5, 2026. NOAA station IDs were checked the same day against the CO-OPS data API. This guide was drafted with software assistance from those pages. Nobody from the Journal visited for it.

Sources

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