by David Johnson

Another Shellfish Saturday

This Saturday one of our "adopted daughters" Katie came down to spend the weekend with us.

Saturday morning started off with Tesha making a nice breakfast of homemade breakfast biscuits, including fresh eggs from our domestic ducks. (A good sign of spring, the ducks are laying)

What a beautiful, sunny, tee shirt day at the coast. I'm good with the rainy coastal weather because when you get a day like this you really appreciate it.

We had some errands and chores to take care of and then after we did some target shooting.





Then it was time to get ready for Katie's first clamming adventure.

My friends Matt and Chris and Chris's son, Hunter met up with us and we hit the beach.

It took a little bit find a good spot with a few shows. I showed the ladies what we were looking for; I showed Katie how to stomp around to make them show and showed them how to use the clam guns.

Sometimes they showed really good and sometimes pretty faint.







Notice that faint one by my heal print.

I like to center my gun over the show with it tilted slightly towards the ocean. Usually you'll find you clam in the second plug of sand. If I feel it start to crunch I'll pull out and reposition slightly.

Pretty soon all were getting into clams.









Notice the plastic tube? I borrowed that one. Take note, if you are going to do some clamming the stainless steel gun is the way to go. It cuts through the sand so much better with less effort and less broken clams.

As it got closer to low slack the clams really started to show. You would be catching one and look around and see several more shows right next to you. It only took an hour and we had six limits as the sun was sinking lower to the ocean.



I bet if we had shown up a half hour later we would have gotten our limits in 30 minutes. We were seeing shows all over as we walked back to the trucks.



It was a beautiful sunset ending to the day as we drove home.





It takes way longer to clean 45 clams than it does to catch them.

We had a few other families come over for another one of our feasts.

As spring approaches the weather is going to be getting better and we will be having more good minus spring tides. Clamming is a great way to introduce young people (or any others for that matter) to the outdoors. Success is common and it's fairly cheap. You will want to have a minus tide and for best success a calm ocean so that the clams will show.

Be sure to consult the ODFW regs.

The Dep of Agriculture has a hot line to call to make sure shellfish are safe from red tide- 800 448 2474

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