raining ktula

Clam digging on July 4th

July 7th, 2006 by ktula

What better way to celebrate the July 4th than a successful clam digging trip to the southern Puget Sound, right? Ever since my one and only successful clam digging trip more than 3 years ago, i had not had much success digging clams around the Puget Sound area.

There are many things to check when planning for a clam digging trip:

1. A valid shell fishing license from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
2. A location known to have abundant clams. I found this recommended Clam and Oyster beaches (PDF) to be really helpful in determining locations with abundance of clams.
3. A very recent Marine Biotoxin Bulletin from the Washington State Department of Health for the health advisory in the target location. This is probably one of the most important things to check for. You don’t want to be eating clams full of PSP (Paralytic Shellfish Poison), ASP (Amnesic Shellfish Poison, aka Domoic Acid) or Vibrio parahaemolyticus.
4. The tide predictions for the location. Unless you plan to dig for clams in your scuba diving gear, it is best to arrive at the location when the tide is low.
5. Bring the necessary clam digging tools: shovel, bucket and knee-high rubber boots (i learned the hard lesson clam digging in my sandals). Every clam digger must have his own bucket for his catch.
6. Clam digging is a rather dirty and messy affair, bring some extra clothing and a few gallons of water to wash the sand/mud off your body.
7. A cooler of some sort to store the clams. I bought a $3 styrofoam cooler from the nearby Safeway and it worked pretty well.

So armed with our freshly printed shell-fishing license for the 2006-2007 season, Janet and i left Seattle before 7 o’clock in the morning. I estimated that it was going to take us less than 2 hours to reach the Oakland Bay Recreation Tidelands, just in time for the first low tide of the day. I wanted to make it back home around noon so that i could watch the Germany-Italy semi-final match of the World Cup. The clam digging area is located just northeast of the Bayshore Golf Club, a few miles northest of Shelton.

The drive there was quite uneventful. Surprisingly, there was not much traffic at all on I-5. I had expected a huge sign for the Bayshore Golf Club after i drove past Shelton. I was wrong. I must have driven past the location by at least 5 miles. We probably wasted 30 minutes trying to locate the golf club. Thanks to the indispensable Google Maps that i installed on my phone, we were able to figure out our way back to the tideland.

The Oakland Bay Recreation Area has its own parking lot and when we were there, there was a portable toilet in the parking lot. There appeared to be two paths to the tideland. We should have taken the path to the right of the sign.

That was me looking clean and fresh prior to getting down and dirty.

I thought i had everything ready for clam digging. On stepping onto the muddy tideland, we realized that our sandals were really not suited for the extremely sticky mud. Our sandals would get stuck in the mud constantly. I took a tumble and fell into the mud when one of my sandals was completely embedded.

But it was all worth it. The first clam that i dug out appeared to be either a Horse or Macoma clam. It was squirting water when i dug it out of the mud. Most of the clams - either Manila or Native Littleneck clams - we found were in area with mixture of gravel and mud. It took a lot of effort in the beginning just to find some clams. After we relocated to another part of the beach, which is directly accessible using the path to the right of the sign which i mentioned earlier, we struck gold. Clams were everywhere, even on the surface! By the time we were done, we had about 70 clams total, and it only took us about one and a half hours.

I found a good way to get rid of the mud on the clams by spraying them with my garden hose. After that, the clams were soaked in salty water to encourage them to expel the mud contained within them. For a while, the water would get cloudy immediately after it was replaced. I found that there were at least 10 clams that were full of nothing but mud!

Before and after - being cooked that is.

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