If you’ve been waiting to hit the beach on a minus-tide series to fill a bucket with steamer clams or butters, your tides are coming up.
But don’t get carried away. That “sweet spot” is not necessarily way down there at the edge of the water.
“Probably the most common mistake made by b
eginners who hear there’s a good set of clam tides coming, is to believe that they have to follow the water clear down to the minus line to find the best digging. Usually, that’s not the case,” Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Alex Bradbury said from the agency’s Point Whitney sh
ellfish lab on Hood Canal.
Most often the best clam digging — except for geoducks, which are a different critter entirely — is found in a mix of sand, mud and gravel, somewhere between the extremes of the usual low tide line above and the minus low tide line below, Bradbury said.
“Watch other diggers and follow those who seem to be finding a lot of clams,” Bradbury said. “I only spend a maximum of, say, 30 seconds digging without finding anything, then I move on, trying higher or lower on the beach until I find the correct level.”
The upcoming series starts about Sunday with a minus 1.2-foot tide and runs through the following weekend. Lowest tides in the series are Wednesday and Thursday, but Bradbury said all four weekend days are plenty low enough for good steamer clam digging.
He likes one of the small “scratcher” one-hand cultivators for most of his digging, but goes equipped with a spade or shovel for those beaches with larger “cobble” gravel.
Birch Bay is one of the best clam beaches in this general area, but all Whatcom County saltwater is closed to digging because of red tide concerns, Bradbury said. A couple of other popular and productive spots include West Penn Cove, and Double Bluff State park, and you can locate those by checking an excellent interactive shellfish map at www.wdfw.wa.gov/fish/shellfish/beachreg.
Purchase a tide book, cheap, at any tackle shop or marina, and then check on marine toxin closures by calling the state Health Department hotline before digging: 1-800-562-5632.
Halibut bonus
The state Fish and Wildlife Department has decided that Marine Area 4, Neah Bay, has enough quota left to open the state’s premier halibut fishery for one more day, June 16. That would make a nice combo trip for those driving over from this area, since the short selective chinook salmon season opens the 18th for two fin-clipped kings daily. Big Salmon Resort operator Joey Lawrence said commercial fishermen have been doing well on chinook along Swiftsure Bank and he expects the sport fishery to be a good one.
The halibut season to this point has been excellent, Lawrence said. The Neah Bay derby on June 2 and 4 was won by a 127-pounder, and there were lots of fish weighed in the 60s and 70s.
It’s not necessary to brave the open ocean for Neah Bay halibut, either. Small boaters score fairly well close to the Neah Bay docks at such spots as the garbage dump and Sail Rock.
Call Big Salmon for more information and/or charter suggestions at 1-866-787-1900.
Recreational shooting
After a five-year hiatus, the Marysville Rifle Club once again offers its everyone-welcome recreational shooting program to the public. Coordinator Adrian Stogin said the program, which runs every Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., provides an excellent covered rifle range with 50-yard, 100-yard and 200-yard distances, plus handgun facilities. The range fee is $10 for adults and $5 for younger shooters. E-mail Stogin at vet2030p@yahoo.com.
Preserve it
Here’s a valuable class that doesn’t come around very often. Holiday Sports in Burlington (just south of Highway 20, west of I-5) presents a free canning class with Vivian Smallwood of the WSU Extension Service on Saturday, June 18, at 10 a.m., followed by a presentation on how best to use a Foodsaver vacuum packer by sales rep Eugene Woo.
Don’t let fish/game go to waste. If you learned how to can from your neighbor, or grandmother, or grandma’s neighbor, this class will ensure you’re following current recommended safety procedures for home canning. If you have never canned but would like to start, this is your event.
Call Holiday at 360-757-4361.
Big trout in the basin
Arlington resident and avid angler Sam Ingran said his son and grandson hit Grimes Lake on its June 1 opener and did very well on the lake’s population of big Lahontan cutthroat. The pair took and released seven or eight fish each in a morning’s fishing, averaging about 22 inches and going up to 3 or 4 pounds.
Grimes lies just north of Jameson Lake in Douglas County.
Ingram said trolling a black Flatfish with silver or red sparkles, or a red Vibrax spinner, was the winning technique.
The pair then headed for Dry Falls Lake, a selective gear fishery, and did equally well on rainbow running 16 to 22 inches, trolling orange/pearl or orange/spatterback frog Dick Nite spoons.
The Sun Lakes State Park ranger told them Park Lake has been putting out brown trout to 5 pounds on a regular basis, trolling across the points with a Rapala plug during evening hours.
For more outdoor news, read Wayne Kruse’s blog at www.heraldnet.com/huntingandfishing.
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