Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, we went razor clamming at Grayland Beach State Park. We’ve not done it before and it was pretty cool! My parents do it a lot, and these are the tips I learned from them.
First off, the campground spots get reserved wayyyy in advance of a good clamming season weekend. So it pays to look ahead at the tide charts for extreme low tide dates, and book a good campsite nine months in advance, which is the earliest the park system will let you reserve. For a small fee, you can always cancel later if you can’t go, or if they don’t open clamming for that weekend. This time we got lucky and were able to snag a campsite rez in September. Apparently due to the holiday weekend, fewer clammers were out.
We took our trailer, but the campground also has tent sites and yurts. The sites adjacent to the beach are the best, then you can walk right from your camp setup out to the clam beds, without having to locate a trail to the beach.
The good low tides are usually (always??) in the evening or at night. So this is a mostly after-dark activity. Good headlamps are a must, and a lot of people also used flashlights and lanterns. Besides a shellfish license, the only other gear you need is a clam shovel or a clam gun (we chose the latter) and a belt-loop mesh bag to hold the loot. And clothing preparation for a really crappy, rainy, windy night.
Amazingly, we encountered balmy and dry evening weather, on the second night we were shedding jackets and just going with our sweatshirts, we were so warm. But this is not normal! Luckily, it doesn’t take that long to get your limit of clams: best case is a half hour, worst case is maybe a couple of hours. So, even if you get wet and cold, you can go back to camp and dry off, without too much suffering.
Here’s how it’s done. You wander about the beach looking for these, clam “shows”:
See that little pencil eraser-sized dimple in the sand, where my toe is pointing? This is a “keyhole” show, one of several indicators that there is a clam under there. (His spitting and moving around will cause the sand to collapse or dome above him, giving away his location.) Then you just center your clam gun over the show, dig down a ways, cover up the air hole in the gun, pull up a core of sand, and repeat until you find the clam. You have to work fast, because curiously, the clams are fast. They can dig downward very quickly and deep once they sense trouble. They will beat you and get away if you dilly dally! But if you are fast with your clam gun action, the upward vacuum suction of the gun will prevent the little guy from doing a deep dive in the sand, and he’ll end up in your bag instead!
It was fun to watch different people and all their different theories and methods for finding shows. Some people tamp the ground with a broomstick-like pole or their shovel handle. Other people stamp. Some just wander slowly about, looking and looking. Some people work in the surf, others way up high on the beach. Some people get down and dig with their hands, getting all wet and sandy.
We started before dark, and the first night I carefully noted a bunch of landmarks on our way out to the beach, so I could find my way back to camp. Little did I realize how dark it gets out there with so little light interference on the coast! Busy staring at the sand for an hour, wandering in random circles, and digging furiously, suddenly I looked up and the landscape was like this:
The tide was so low, it was very disorientating- almost hard to even tell which way was water, which way was land! Luckily, once you find your way to the dunes and grassline, you can walk along it and find numbered sign posts so you can figure out where you are (if you remembered to note the post number on the way out)! Many people parked their cars on the beach, and some had put special flashing lights in the windows so they could locate their cars when they were done.
Here are the fruits of an evening’s labor:
The limit each day is fifteen clams, and the rule says you have to keep the first fifteen you get. Regardless of whether you’ve squished some (razor clam shells are fragile) or if there are some tiny ones. But this is still a pretty good-sized amount. I would guess we netted three or four pounds of clam meat between the two of us, over two nights.
We rushed right back into the trailer and got busy cleaning ours so we could indulge right away. Dipped briefly in hot water, they open right up, and are easy to cut open with scissors and rinse. We sliced them into strips, breaded them and fried them in olive oil. Both nights. Delicious!
When we got home, we had clam linguini on Sunday night, and clam chowder on Wednesday night. All gone!
The collies, of course, benefitted from the non-clamming downtime during the day, getting multiple beach sprints, and a lot of swimming and fetching. Crummy weather is the best for dog walking on the beach, as there is nobody around.
December 3, 2011 at 9:29 pm
What fun! We used to use a little Boy Scout camp shovel to dig for them. And I know all about those cold, wet nights. There was no getting warm in a beach tent that I recall, what with the wind battering the tent and sometimes almost blowing it over, and us with it! Still, it is fun digging for those little gems. Thanks for the memories!
December 4, 2011 at 2:21 am
LOL, Kathryn Grace, I think tent camping may be dubious in the “fun” category! But I suppose there are always a couple of shabby diners in town there where you can warm up and get a burger!
December 4, 2011 at 4:02 am
My grandparents used to go clamming at least once a year, probably more as they’d go after geoduck as well. I’ve never been. Looks interesting though!
December 4, 2011 at 1:02 pm
I love Greyland Beach – I’m so pleased you had such a terrific holiday weekend, and a yummy one too.
December 4, 2011 at 4:34 pm
It’s a cool beach isn’t it Dawn? It seems like it’s the lesser known beach, that everyone knows about Westport, Ocean Shores and Long Beach. But a lot of people questioned me about where Grayland was.
December 6, 2011 at 1:58 am
CF, ahhh, the nostalgia of the beach, the thrum of the surf, the salt air assaulting your nostrils…sand, surf, and CLAMS! When I was a kid, one week of Dad’s summer vacation (two a year) was designated West Coast (my paternal grandparents lived in Seattle). From E. Wash. we would head to the “coast,” visit with the grandparents for a day or two, and then head for the ocean beaches (Copalis Beach/Alexander’s By the Sea). Mind, these were the days before razor clams had a season; one could go clamming during the summer months (the limit, tho, was still fifteen, if memory serves me). All we needed in those days was a tide chart and a clam shovel. Clam guns??? Uhhh, uh! Even as a youn’g I had a certain machismo, a clamming credo, that prompted me to go after those mollusks barehanded. I would find the “squirt hole,” drop to my knees, and scoop furiously. And, I never lost a contest that I can remember. Real men clam barehanded! (In spite of the shell-slashed fingernails and fingers).
Back at the cozy cabin, we would shower off the sand and clean the clams. That night it would be fried clams for dinner. We would also net enough (six limits) to put on ice, transport to our freezer back home, and during the winter months relive the summer via a steaming bowl of clam chowder.
I also used the clam necks as bait for perch I caught in the surf (these also went back home to the freezer). I would keep the clam necks in the pocket of my bathing suit. One summer I forgot to remove the unused “bait.” The next swimming session when I went for my suit, a terrible stench emanated from that pocket. No series of laundry could dispel the odor and I believe I had to trash the suit and buy a new one.
Calm chowder? I always include a pint of home canned corn. As far as clam chowder goes, nothing can equal clam chowder made from the razors.
Thanks, so much, for sharing. TMJ
December 6, 2011 at 2:01 am
P.S. Serve that last paragraph up as “clam” chowder, please. (Don’t you have an edit function on your blog service???) TMJ
December 7, 2011 at 3:59 am
LOL, TMJ, I am so glad that you make typos. At first I thought it was me, and thought ” is he still catching my spelling errors after all these years?” 😀
Yeah, yeah, the clam guns are kinda cheating; though I have to say, there were plenty of people out there with traditional clam shovels, and all the local stores carried both implements, so theories must be split on which tool is superior?
I love your clam necks in the pocket story. I can so envision a boy doing something like that. In fact, I think my husband still does things like that. 😉
December 7, 2011 at 5:06 am
Keep clam…or calm. Just depends on whether you’re hungry or stressed (or old)….TMJ
Have you read The Great Typo Hunt? The story of two guys who set out to edit America?
December 7, 2011 at 8:53 pm
Ah memories! I have lots of fond memories of clamming along the coast with my folks growing up. Wonderful times!
December 10, 2011 at 3:30 am
TMJ, I didn’t read the book, but I did read the literal Reader’s Digest version and thought it was hilarious. I’m sure I’m not innocent of typos and grammatical errors myself, but they do bug me when I spot them on signs. A neighboring farm here had a tall, narrow banner made, forcing them to spit the word “headquarters” into two lines. What resulted was “Horse Head Quarters,” which makes me wonder, if you are only boarding the head, and not the entire horse, is it less expensive? 😉
January 1, 2012 at 4:57 pm
[…] I didn’t want to be hauling feed to five separate groups of sheep. And this year, we wanted to go clamming over Thanksgiving weekend; so I needed breeding to be done by then. (Keeping records of which ewes […]
January 6, 2013 at 7:25 am
[…] we went razor clamming again at Grayland Beach. Such an aptly named town, since this time of year, the whole place is in […]
January 6, 2013 at 7:53 pm
Really cool. I love your photos and descriptions.
January 6, 2013 at 8:12 pm
Thanks Virginia! 🙂