Make A Living Alongshore...Digging Clams

Image Gallery Chowder-clam and other quahog sizes

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Phil Schwind is a Cape Codder who's been supplying both his family and local markets with freshly caught seafood for some 40 years . . . and he has now distilled all that valuable fishing-for-profit experience into a slim, yet near-exhaustive volume which can help you to get started in this outdoor enterprise too!

Making a Living Alongshore concentrates mainly on fish and shellfish found along the Atlantic coast . . . but Schwind's observations will help would-be market fishermen up and down the Pacific shore as well. And though the following excerpt focuses on clams, Schwind's interesting book also gives detailed infor. mation on surf fishing, flounder dragging, eel potting, quahogging, scalloping, and catching blue mussels.

"Whatever happened to the alongshore fisherman?" Schwind asks sadly, "the little fellow who provided his neighborhood with fish and shellfish that were fresh, fresh, FRESH . . . right out of the water with their tails still wagging or their shells clamped shut? The fish and shellfish remain there for the taking, but the fine art of making a living along the shore has gone the way of blacksmithing and candlemaking."

If you're lucky enough to live along a coast where the waters are still relatively unpolluted, Schwind's book may be just the tool you need to get started in a self-employment venture where freedom, sunrises, and salty breezes are as much a part of the payoff as the actual income you put in your wallet.

The often lonely way of the alongshore fisherman is not for everyone. But for the right person there is still a living to be made almost everywhere in the salt marshes and estuaries. It is a trade without glamour-a trade that takes a great deal of ingenuitybut it is a way of living ... one without parallel in freedom and personal satisfaction.

The tools of the trade are many and varied . . . and a number can be handcrafted. I will try to describe them in enough detail so you can make them yourself. I will also try to explain why they are made the way they are . . . so that an understanding of the tools may help you make ones that are better and more efficient.

The blind, dumb attitude, "That isn't the way my father taught me," or "That isn't the way the book says to do it," has always made me extremely frustrated. I've lost a couple of otherwise very special partners because I couldn't stand it. Probably my attitude of "Let's try something new," or "There must be a better way," was equally upsetting to them. You do have to start off with a little of, "This is the way it has always been done and there's a reason for it," but there is always a better way. While the search for that better way can be more expensive-sometimes almost catastrophic-the satisfaction and the profit of finding a superior method of doing anything can be worth all of the trials.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print