Clamming & Crabbing Report

Hit the east side of Oak Bay during the recent minus tides as part of my Cascadia Big Fishing Year (www.bigfishingyear.net). We camped Ft. Flager which itself produced many large Purple Varnish Clams as well keeper Red Rocks and Dungies from the boat dock.

I had never clammed Oak Bay but it was one of the few areas not under a WA DOH advisory so we spent most of our time here in the morning on the -2' tides. Butters and Pacific Gapers were abundant in the upper intertidal zone where there is mixed cobble/sand. It made for tough digging but the clams were all shallow (< 1'). Sizable Native Littlneck were also fairly common here but were patchily distributed. Lower down in the sand/sea grass zones we found very large numbers of massive Fat Gapers which were buried 2-3' deep and were a chore to extract (about 7-10 minutes/clam). However, they are very large and produce a significant amount of meat from their neck. We easily limited out each day on gapers and would process the clams at the fish cleaning station at Ft. Flagler each evening. While not our primary objective crab raking for Red Rocks was very productive in the grass beds with many large Red Rocks available to choose from.

A major target of this trip was geoduck which was a species that alluded us last year at Duckabush. Only as the tide came in on our next to last day did I spot one which I immediately flagged. The next day we returned to dig the geoduck out. Our excitement grew as the flags emerged from the water. To my surprise there was absolutely no sign of a geoduck there other than the presence of my flags. Only when I poked the area with my finger did it retract its neck and reveal its presence. I didn't know they could be so cryptic! Working with my wife we spent 45 minutes digging out the geoduck which turned out to be almost 5.5 ft underground. It was exhausting!!! We felt so triumphant when we finally extracted it. A major accomplishment in my book of things to do in Cascadia.

Here is a little and hopefully entertaining video of our geoduck dig.