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The fiance and I dug for clams at Tolmie in the afternoon starting about half an hour to an hour before low tide. We got between us about 50 Manila and butter clams and the pictured horse clams. I'll be making horse clam and corn chowder tonight:

http://fat-of-the-land.blogspot.com/2011/07/horsing-around-clam-and-corn-chowder.html

I wasn't aware that bent-nose clams were allowed to be kept (since they weren't mentioned anywhere in the regs) but upon further review they clearly fall under the category "ALL OTHER MARINE CLAMS" with no size minimum and a limit of 40 (in combination with the other small clams you retain). With this knowledge in hand, next time I'll keep the bent-noses and get a limit in about 30 minutes.

The steamers made for some delicious spaghetti with clam sauce last night (despite a couple of gritty ones). That and some Pinot Gris capped off a pretty good day.

BentRod

8/8/2012 9:54:00 PM

Glad you have a use for the horse clams. Never have tried eating them before. Used to dig them for bait.
Love butter and Manilas though.
As a word of caution about bent-nose clams, they feed differently than most of the other types found on the beach. They actually will vacuum up the detritus in the sand as opposed to the other clams that will filter their nutrients out of the water that is flowing by. Because of this, the bent-nose clam has been shown to have higher levels of contamination than their counter parts.
You may have also noticed the presence of brown clams on the beach that are known as purple varnish clams or mahogany clams. They're an invasive species from Asia. There hasn't been much research done on them, but they're also legal to harvest. FWIW.

Skullduggery

8/9/2012 1:46:00 AM

I hickory smoked some Horse clams. The cleaning process took me forever, but they turned out really good..

Jake Dogfish

8/9/2012 4:36:00 AM

Excellent! Horse clams are great for Clam chowder. Thanks for the report.

Kaptain King

8/9/2012 9:53:00 AM

I heard this weekend on the Outdoor Line that there is red tide in the South Sound so be careful where and what you eat...Is Tolmie considered South Sound?

The Quadfather

8/10/2012 8:05:00 PM

Really nice to read a clamming report on here once in awhile. I love to dig the razors near Moclips. Enjoy your chowder.
Daryl with the clam knowledge! Didn't know that you were into that stuff.

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