OC Waves 3.4

SHELLFISH SURPRISE!
this overlooked sport last year in Lincoln County
alone.
“You go out to the bridge in Newport next
week and you’ll see hundreds of people up to their
knees in mud,” asserted Dan Jennings, a charter
boat skipper who used a curved knife to pry open
razor and butter clams at a cleaning station in
Depoe Bay. “They buy gas, motel rooms and gear,
which isn’t cheap. It’s bigger than people think.”
Prime clamming areas can be found wherever
the rivers meet the sea:
YAQUINA BAY
From Early Man to Modern Man, Yaquina
Bay has been a rich source of mouthwatering
shellfish delights, including cockle, butter, Native
Littleneck and gaper clams. Here, the tidewater
extends up-bay for 12-and-a-half miles, with 1,700
acres of clam habitat.
CLAM DIGGING is an inexpensive and fun outdoor sport the whole family can enjoy. There are few special techniques,
little brutal terrain and the quarry won’t kill and eat you if you make a mistake. (Photos by Rick Beasley)
Low tides reveal more than shipwrecks and
tidepools at the Central Oregon Coast, also
exposing the sandy bars and muddy flats where
prized Oregon bay clams are found in abundance
and variety.
These tidal lowlands are home to seven species
of clams that provide inexpensive and fun outdoor
adventure, requiring only a shovel, a bucket and a
tide table.
“The bay clam season — butters, cockles,
littlenecks and gapers — is open all year long with a
shellfish harvest license,” reported Mitch Vance, a
shellfish biologist for Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife in Newport. “But the lower tides just
expose a lot more beach, with access to the clams
you normally can’t get to.”
The addition of two non-native bivalves, the
softshell and varnish clams, often make for easy
pickings. According to ODFW, recreational clam
diggers shovel and rake about 100,000 pounds of
clams per year from Yaquina Bay. Whether fried,
minced, steamed or simmered in chowder, the
clams of Lincoln County provide a year-round
source of delicious table fare.
Greenhorns find the packed sand of the
southwest jetty, home to the Gaper Clam which
buries its seven-inch shell under three feet of
muddy sand, an excellent location to hone their
clamming techniques. While you can take up to
12 of these whopper “horsenecks,” one is a meal
in itself. Clam diggers packing more garden tools
can rake cockles on the surface beneath the Hwy.
CLAM DIGGER DALE DIXON hoists a handful of butter
clams from Yaquina Bay, which boasts 1,700 acres of
clam beds on both side of the river for 12-1/2 miles.
Dale Dixon of Depoe Bay fell out of bed one
morning at 7:15 a.m. when the ocean dropped by
two-and-half feet to unveil a favorite bed of butter
clams.
“It was wonderful to see this untouched beach
with ‘show’ everywhere,” said Dixon, who can
trace his Native American roots to the great
fishermen of the Salish tribe. “That’s the sign you
look for, that little funnel that comes up to the
surface for them to breathe.”
Buried in the sandy mudflats of Yaquina Bay,
Siletz Bay, Alsea Bay and the beaches in between,
clams are an unseen driver of Oregon fishing and
tourism industries. According to fish and game
researchers, nearly 11,000 people – many in mud
and wet sand up to their shoulders — discovered
THE “BRIDGE BED” ON YAQUINA BAY yielded this
homely Gaper Clam whose meaty neck can be
tenderized, dipped in egg, breaded in cracker crumbs
and fried to deliver a mouth-watering shellfish delicacy.
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BY RICK BEASLEY | FISHING CORRESPONDENT
OC WAVES • VOL 3.4