White hot razor clamming!

[O. mykiss]

For Father’s Day weekend my family and I went and stayed at nehalem bay state park. Got up a little early Saturday and drove to gearhart where we quickly picked up 3 limits of very high quality razors! Then spent the afternoon at Mcminnamins having beverages and walking the campus. Great weekend to be at the coast!

 

[scched]

Sounds like a good day to me. Never been razor-clamming and have actually never eaten one. I know, blasphemy around these parts..

 

[jamisonace]

For Father’s Day weekend my family and I went and stayed at nehalem bay state park.

I need to do that someday. Last weekend I had the fried razor clams at Tidal Raves. That might have been my first time eating razor clams. Delicious.

The kid looks proud. My kids loved going clamming.

 

[DOKF]

Sounds like a good day to me. Never been razor-clamming and have actually never eaten one. I know, blasphemy around these parts..

You have to try it at least once! Clamming, then eating the harvest! Nothing like fresh caught razors. You can by them sometimes at the fishmonger (or Costco), but never the same.

 

[scched]

I need to try it out! Down a google rabbit hole I go...

 

[DOKF]

I need to try it out! Down a google rabbit hole I go...

A great excuse to head to the coast. Unfortunately, I usually head the other way in search of sunnier weather.

 

[scched]

Do I need to have a minus tide to get them or will just a normal low tide produce too? Watched some YouTube videos last night, seems fairly straight forward

 

[O. mykiss]

You are going to want a minus tide. The bigger the better but at least a -.6 or so. There are TONS of clams this year so I do t think a huge minus tide is as important this year. It was a -1.2 or so when we went and there were clams in the dry sand 150 yds from the surf

 

[rogerdodger]

while not universally true, a good tip for new diggers- I find the clams are not as deep and show much better early in the tide cycle, when the low is not that long after sunrise. After several days of the beach above them being exposed and dry, many of the razors seem to stay deep and wait for there to be more water above.

last Monday, 6am low, the first day of this cycle- big shows all over, I was done in 20 minutes and the clams were mostly just half the gun deep.

then on Sunday, same exact beach, 11am low, last day of the cycle- very subtle shows, some just a small disturbance of wet sand as a wave receded, took me 2 hours to limit and most were at least a full gun deep, several took a second punch to get.

 

[scched]

Appreciate all the info in here. Looking forward to coming back for the best part… recipe requests

 

[O. mykiss]

while not universally true, a good tip for new diggers- I find the clams are not as deep and show much better early in the tide cycle, when the low is not that long after sunrise. After several days of the beach above them being exposed and dry, many of the razors seem to stay deep and wait for there to be more water above.

last Monday, 6am low, the first day of this cycle- big shows all over, I was done in 20 minutes and the clams were mostly just half the gun deep.

then on Sunday, same exact beach, 11am low, last day of the cycle- very subtle shows, some just a small disturbance of wet sand as a wave receded, took me 2 hours to limit and most were at least a full gun deep, several took a second punch to get.

That’s a great point Roger. At seaside Saturday towards the end of the tide cycle, the clams up further were deeper than I’ve ever seen. They were 18-24” down, which is back breaking. The shallower clams were definitely closer to the surf

 

[ulitaco]

That’s a great point Roger. At seaside Saturday towards the end of the tide cycle, the clams up further were deeper than I’ve ever seen. They were 18-24” down, which is back breaking. The shallower clams were definitely closer to the surf

So the end of a tide cycle is when the clams seem to be much deeper? It makes sense. I have only gone a few times and it was an easy 20-30min tops to get my limit even on my first trip ever which was a night trip last year. This last time I went to Seaside on the very last week. Brought my visiting family this time and I was telling them how easy it was and that we would be right in and out of there. Nope, not this time. took me like 30 min just to get my first clam. I dug a bunch of what I am positive were shows and plunged them about 2-3 times and felt around and nothing. The clams I did catch eventually took 2 plunges for 90% of them because of how deep they were in the sand. In the end I got my limit but it took like an hour and a half to two hours and my family got about 7-8 each since they were done after that due to having to dig so deep and tired out. I'm still new to all this so I'm learning on the go.