Digging Razor Clams

Digging razor clams is not like digging steamer clams. Some folks use a long narrow shovel and they may consider themselves purists but we have found that clam ‘guns’ work just fine for us. These guns are tubes, often made of plastic pipe but also made of aluminum or steel, with handles on the top. A clammer finds a clam ‘show’ – a dimple in the wet sand – and then carefully lines the gun up with that dimple and going at an angle with the handle a bit back towards shore, the clammer shoves the tube as far into the sand as she can. Then she puts her thumb or finger over a small hole on the handle and pulls the tube, now full of heavy, wet sand, out and with any luck, the clam will be in that sand. She may have to do this twice or just reach down into the wet sand and grab the clam before it digs away from her. These clam digs are timed with low tides and often are at night. We were lucky that our tides were in the early evening and the days are lengthening so we did not need lanterns and head lamps! There is a limit of fifteen clams per person per day. We got our limits each day. After digging, you have to clean the clams and that’s really the hard part. People get to drive on the beach to their favorite spot. We were lucky to be staying right on the beach so just walked out the door to our favorite spot!