Dene and I went clamming this Saturday at Kalaloch beach on the Washington State coast. The Washington state department of fish and wildlife opened up a couple of beaches this weekend for Razor clamming and Kalaloch was one of them. We went to Kalaloch last year and loved the place so we chose this beach to go Razor clamming. Dene gets the supplemental reports from the Department of Fish and Game and their report also made it sound like there were really good populations at Kalaloch so that also made the decision easy.
We made reservations at Kalaloch lodge since and loved it there. Its an expensive place though so we decided to only stay one night and since the clamming didn't start till afternoon we figured it would be plenty of time to get up and get there from Seattle. This worked out great because low tide was at 6:30 and good clamming wouldn't start till about 3 or 4 PM while the tide was going out. We even had time to scope out a couple of different beaches and decided the one just north of the campground would be ideal.
At first we started hiking away from all the other clammers but then decided the other people out there were not a bad thing as they actually knew what they were doing while we were newbies who were expecting a spout of water coming out of the sand. When this wasn't happening we were wondering how the heck are these people finding these clams? I saw a bunch of people taking their shovels and tapping the ground. I was wondering what the hell does that do? I finally asked someone what this did and she said that the clams would spit up if they were they. So I started mimicking this behavior to see if I could see something different in the sand. I saw nothing. No spitting clams and I couldn't see where they were and Dene was just as frustrated. When I was a kid and went clamming with my parents, I remember the clams spitting up out of the sand. These razor clams were a bit different.
So I finally asked someone who had just dug up a clam, what are you looking for. He told me there is a small indentation in the sand about the size of a dime. Look for that. Then a kid told me here look there are three of them right here and then I saw what they were all looking for and it all became clear. I relayed that information to Dene and we started looking for these indentations. It took awhile but we finally figured out what to look for and started bringing up clams.
As we were growing more and more tired we happend upon this family who was doing quite well and started digging near them. They didn't seem to mind and in fact said there were more clams there than they could ever dig up and they were right. We found most of our clams in this spot and then after we had dug up about 7 or 8 a peice decided we were completely exhausted and were ready to quit. Thanks to all those people who were nice to us and helped us out. Now we have a much better idea about what we are doing and are talking about going for Gooey Duck next.
That night in spite of our exhaustion I cleaned the razor clams and was pleasantly surprised to see how much meat we got from them. The limit was 15 a peice and we got about half that. If we had gotten our limit we would have had enough for several meals for sure. Once cleaned I put them in the little refrigerator we had. We iced them up for the way home and then put them in the freezer right away when we arrived.
Should be an excellent chowder and we looking forward to it.
