Digging for sea clams is one of the simplest, most rewarding, unique and satisfying pleasures the great Atlantic has to offer. I’ve been clamming Weekapaug, Rhode Island’s Winnapaug Pond for 50 years and it never gets old.
The Winnapaug Salt Pond is connected to the Atlantic Ocean by the Weekapaug Breachway. Every six hours, the breach brings in a tide, filling the pond to the brim, or pulls out a tide, leaving the pond shallow with exposed mudflats. It is at this point -low tide- when the clams come out. Winnapaug Pond features several small tributaries or inlets. Most are shallow, crystal clear inlets, about 20 feet wide and knee-deep at best. Others are a little wider and a little deeper to the chest. What these inlets, shallow or deep, have in common is that there are clams on the bottom!
Before starting our excursion, it is necessary to carry out some legal procedures. You will need a Rhode Island seafood license which can be obtained at city hall and several other places for a nominal fee. When your license is issued, you will be issued a steel ring approximately two inches in diameter. Later we will talk about how this ring will be your most important equipment.
The only other equipment you’ll need is a clam rake that looks a lot like your 6-inch tine 5-prong garden rake. Only instead of digging up your garden soil, you’ll be removing mud with the implement. Once you are in the water, start raking over the sandy bottom until you hear and feel what appears to be rock. Carefully bury the rake head behind this solid object and get it all out: the object and all the mud around it! He then dips the mass into the water several times, each time more mud peeling off until the ‘object’ finally appears. Sometimes it will actually be a rock, resulting in a moment of disappointment. Other times it will be a shell, an old one, from a clam that has long since left this world. But sometimes the rake contains a beautiful, shiny, gray, live clam! And as mundane as it may seem, you can’t contain your excitement! Before you get too excited though, grab that steel ring we talked about. If the clam you caught goes through the ring, the creature must be returned to the ocean because it is too small. Don’t take this lightly. Wardens from the Department of Environmental Management frequently check clam fishing areas and can monitor their catch if they wish. You don’t want to know what can happen if one of your clams goes through its ring.
Most clamshells are in search of the smaller ‘steamers’ that go well with a cup of melted butter. Others go after the biggest quahogs to put them in a clam chowder. The clams I catch don’t have that fate. I hold each clam I catch in my hand, study it, marvel at its coloration, enjoy its coolness to the touch, and then return it to where it belongs: the soft, sandy ocean floor. My reasoning is that these clams made their journey from the ocean, forced their way through the gap, and arrived at the calm of the salty pond. How cruel it would be to reward the joy they brought me by presenting them with a bottle of cocktail sauce.