8/6/2023 0 Comments Clam to horse clam to geo duckConveniently, this process doubled as my alarm clock. The succulent bivalves were extra tender that morning as Robinson made sure to pound them into submission with a meat tenderizing mallet in the dawn’s early light. To top it off, the short clams were decidedly skinny.Īfter a long night of warming our souls by the fire, the real payoff came the next morning when Robinson prepared fresh egg-battered clams for breakfast. Just as Robinson had reported from earlier in the week, the vast majority of the 45 clams harvested by our three-person party were significantly smaller than five inches. This is best described as clam diggers nirvana.īecause a battle wound is merely an opportunity for storytelling, the only relative disappointment of the evening was the small size of the clams. That clam is the key to the end of the journey, where clean clothes, warm showers, and hot toddies by a crackling fire await. Only the unearthing of the final clam that completes the digging party’s anticipated limit, exceeds the aforementioned state. The pain was less than the blood loss would have suggested. A deep gash ran laterally from the bottom of my fingerprint all the way up and through my fingernail. Upon examination, the damage inflicted by the bivalve was quite impressive. I didn’t stop though digging though, as adrenaline took over and I retrieved my attacker from his sandy hideaway. Actually, it was a slice, and a good one at that. As soon as I plunged my left hand into the liquid sand I felt the pinch. I searched meticulously for large craters, probably to my detriment, and waited as the collapsing holes of failed digs filled with the incoming tide to reveal more bounty. Robinson employed a persistent sand stomping technique that seemed to make more clam holes visible by collapsing the loose sand beneath. It was difficult to distinguish regular tidal air bubbles from the small clam siphon holes. The wind steadily eroded the telltale “volcano” and “doughnut” markings of the biggest clams, leaving the surf smoothed surface frustratingly uniform. That “steady breeze” continued to batter my exposed face and ears while making my life rather difficult in another way. The wind was constantly whipping tufts of sea foam from the water’s edge, sending them dashing across the hard pack sand like the sailing rocks of Death Valley in hyper-time lapse. He also noted that the clams had been notably smaller than in previous years. Robinson said he had been out digging twice earlier that week and dug his requisite 15-minute limit both days. It was a good low tide that evening, and it was also the first night-time dig of the season, making lanterns a necessity. ![]() “You can tell them this is how the locals do it.” Robinson insisted his legs don’t get cold and he prefers not to have extra fabric that inevitably gets wet in the surf. I was over equipped with calf-high rubber boots, water-proof pants, and a rain jacket over sedimentary layers of shirts. This was in November, at night, on the beach. The next thing I realized was that Robinson was wearing shorts and some sandy old running shoes coupled with a common hooded sweatshirt. He laughed when I inquired about his tool and simply noted that he has found that it works best for him. I first figured out that the locals do it a little different when I noticed Robinson chose not a shining, silver-handled clam gun or a standard spade as his preferred weapon, but a short-handled old thing with a skinny flat head, like a trench shovel. He has been known to conquer a clam or two per minute, occasionally even pulling multiple clams from one hole. On that trip, he slept in a wooden smelt box (there is photographic evidence). Robinson, 62, has lived just off the beach for 34 years, and made his first clamming trip to the beach when he was just six weeks old. ![]() On this excursion I was lucky enough to be guided by a local clam hound named Mike Robinson. Rather, this radiant late fall day on the Long Beach Peninsula, home of the “World’s Longest Beach” as well as Jake the Alligator Man, was dedicated to the pursuit of razor clams. A few fine boletus mushrooms beckoned from beneath the bottom rung of pine branches too, but fungus was not our quarry. Along the curve of the nettle-mulched path edges, brilliantly toned red and yellow amanita mushrooms popped forth from the spongy mycelium mat. Our walk to the shore wound down and around a scrub pine sand trail where a beach-combing black bear has been known to roam.
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