Make A Living Alongshore...Digging Clams

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I learned the traditional ways of making a living alongshore from a dozen friends, but since most of them have gone on to better fishing grounds . . . I can only pass on to you some of the bits of knowledge they taught me-some techniques and "wrinkles"-and thus in a small way perhaps I can repay them.

Not all the know-how was acquired the easy way. Some of it was absorbed by a sort of osmosis: I soaked it in. My good wife had justification when I came home after a blowy day ashore, to greet me with, "Where have you been? You promised to put up the storm sash" . . . or whatever. But it was by listening to stories of the same fish being caught over and over that I learned little by little to try this or forget that . . . it was the listening that taught me, plus my continual dissatisfaction with the way things were done. So much of what is here was learned with "cut-and-try" . . . much was make-do. If I wasn't making enough to pay the grocery bill, I changed and changed ... and changed again until whatever gear I was using worked. . . or I gave up for a while and turned to something else to make a dollar.

There's one thing that bothers me about the present generation of fishermen: They act as though they are either lonesome or timid . . . as though whatever the crowd does is the best way. Nobody goes "looking" anymore. Nobody seems to want a better way or a hotter place. It's always the itchy character-the guy who wants to see what's on the other side of the next wavewho finds a new spot, invents new gear, and pulls the whole fleet in his wake.

I learned one other principle from the old-timers: "Get in when the band begins to play and get out before the coda! "

THE FISHERMAN'S YEAR

Let's take an example: We dug clams until Labor Day . . . after which the year's supply of clams was thinned down. Soon the market was even thinner. But littleneck clams were in demand and one tanner or another wanted big quahogs. That was only a stopgap, however, because-come the first of October-the scallop season opened. Then everybody and his dog and his grandmother's cousin got into the scallop business . . . and the price dropped proportionately. Next, the first of November opened the flounder dragging season. Since that took a certain amount of gear, not everyone could get into the business. We dragged them first in one salt pond and then in another . . . finding that if we went back in a couple of weeks we caught almost as many the second time around as we had the first.

And then-when winter came-we got frozen in, good and solid. So what did we do? We speared eels through the ice Tf WP had in January thaw, we either went back to scallop dragging or-if there were any left and the price was rightwe hit the flounders again. Spring saw the handliners wanting moonsnails for bait (sometimes we made more money than the handliners), and by May the striped bass were in the marsh. If striper fishing was thin when the moonsnail market eased off (for years we forgot clams because "there weren't none", though that's certainly not the case now), then we ourselves went handlining for flounders. But we were geared for stripers if they struck in again. We also ran conch pots some years and eel pots others.

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