This past weekend while Matt and Wild Bill sought lockjawed steelhead, Shelly and I escaped the heat and stubborn fish and headed over to the Oregon Coast for an easy and releaxing day of clamming. It’s good, clean fun!
Talk about effort to reward ratio! Locate a nice clam flat, find some holes and start digging. We harvested a bunch of smallish softshells-but with a generous 36 softshell limit we’ve been eating well. Here’s Shelly showing off some of our catch:
Sure, it’s mucky sandy business but the area where we were digging wasn’t too bad. We know where the fatties are though–in a really muddy spot in the estuary. We’ll nab some of them next time when we don’t have dinner reservations in a couple hours.
Besides the softshells I found one big, delicous cockle:
With salmon runs being low (I’m not going to harvest any wild chinook this year) and there being no guarantee of a fish, I think I’ll definitely integrate clamming into my agenda on the days I’m trolling lower tidewater. That way I’m sure to come back with something and who knows, we might end up with quite a feast!
I love clamming and musseling (and seaweeding for that matter). Oh and cockles too.
Never done softshells, whereabouts if you care to divulge. If not I totally understand.
Bp
No problem. We were diggig in the lower Siuslaw bay off of North Jetty Road. The fatty flat on the ’slaw is at the confluence of the North Fork Siulslaw.
I need tofigure out what else is edible down there. I’ve musseled but haven’t harvested an “sea vegetables.”