Make A Living Alongshore...Digging Clams

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If you're planning to sell your fish, keep them cool after you catch them. If you're in a skiff, lay them on their backs with their bellies up so they won't turn red. Cover them with a wet burlap bag if you have one. Bury them in wet sand if you're on the beach. (I guess I don't need to suggest that you mark the spot clearly so you won't lose it.) Wash your fish before you take them to market, though: Very few fish buyers like to buy sand.

CLAM DIGGING: TOOLS

Digging for soft-shell clams (steamers, long-neck clams, piss clams, Mya arenaria) by hand may not be the easiest way to make a living along the shore, but it is one of the easiest skills to learn-provided your back is strong enough-and one of the least expensive to undertake. After you have acquired your shellfish license, the only equipment you will need is a couple of clam hoes ("diggers, forks, or hacks", depending on where you live) and a means of transporting your clams ... whether in baskets or hods (or "drainers", to use the old phrase). Of course, you will need to work in an area affected neither by pollution nor by Gonyaulax tamaren sis (the "red tide") .

You will probably need a couple of clam hoes (or more), because not all the bottom in which you'll find clams is the same. One type of hoe works in firm sand, another in sticky mud, a third in wet, porous sand. For some reason-not excepting the socalled Ipswich digger-there is no good clam hoe available in any local hardware store. The teeth on "boughten" hoes are too short or too blunt. The angle where the tang fits the handle is either too flat or (as with the abovementioned Ipswich hoe) too steep. And the handle is far too long. Except for the fact that they cost too much, there isn't much else wrong with them.

If you are planning to dig in coarse, watery sand where the clams lie relatively deep (and while the biologists may say Mya is found two and a half times as deep as its own length, this is variable), you will need a fourtined hoe with a good "hook" in the teeth. These teeth should be wide (perhaps as much as 3/4 inch) and long (at least 10 inches and perhaps as much as 12 inches in extreme cases). The handle should certainly be no longer than 18 inches. I personally prefer 16.

While this hoe can be used in wet, soupy sand or mud, it would kill you in tightly packed sand or in mud with a large clay content. In damp but not watery sand, the clams probably won't be as deep. My favorite hoe for this kind of digging was made of an old, "ladies" spading fork, with teeth that were 3/8 of an inch wide and 10 inches long.

If you are digging in clayey mud, the clams probably will be even shallower, so a six-tined hoe with rounded tines eight inches long is a better tool. Since none of these tools is available locally, the local men have the blacksmith alter storebought versions. If there is no local blacksmith, most garages have a mechanic pretty well skilled with a torch or electric welding outfit.

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