by Steve “Tuna” Tornovish
Well would you look at that: Memorial Day weekend was a few days ago and Nantucket is insta-busy. Not surprising, of course, but it does feel often sudden this year. Perhaps it’s due to the lack of any real warm weather. Or maybe it’s that this national holiday was celebrated a week earlier than usual this year. Whatever it may be, it’s busy! Joggers, bikers, e-bikers, rental cars, Ubers, summer neighbors, people riding scooters or those crazy big wheel skateboard thingies – the island is very people-y all at once.
That’s why I jumped at the chance to escape for a few hours last Saturday, when my buddy Josh Sandsbury asked me to join him on his boat for a clam digging run. Josh is a great friend. He and I, along with our third amigo Mike Ramos, had ducked off-island the previous week for a sojourn into central Maine to spend a day with a freshwater fishing guide. We fished at Thompson Lake in Oxford, ME—a spectacular place to fish! Thompson Lake is seven miles of gin-clear water and is full of refrigerator-sized boulders. Our fishing guide, Mike Andreotti, was a retired police detective (as am I, for those of you who may have missed some of Season One). The trip was a blast. We caught some beautiful smallmouth bass, Cap’n Mike was great and the quick boys’ trip will certainly be repeated!
Back on Nantucket and surrounded by invading weekenders, we formulated our quahog adventure. Josh texted me an important question: Town or Madaket? We both agreed that hauling his 22-foot boat on a trailer through the downtown madness was just asking for trouble. Madaket won by default. Low tide was around noon. We rounded up our gear and got at it (Pitter patter, let’s get at ‘er, for you Letterkenny types).
And what is needed for clamming gear, you ask? Well, the boat is fairly essential. It allows for the clammers to hit some different flat areas in the western bay. Low tide is also important. The clams are nestled all snug in the sand and grass, and the clamming types need to be standing in the water in order to seek them out. The less water, the better.
Did I mention rakes? Yeah, clam rakes are suggested. Sure, some intrepid folks will use their toes to detect where the hard-shelled clams are buried and then reach down and dig them out. That’s a younger person’s method. Josh and I went with the traditional quahog rakes, complete with wire baskets. The clam rakes have six to eight metal tines that are about three inches long, pointed and curved akin to a predator’s paw. The tines dig into the sand. When the metal tines make contact with a quahog shell, the digger can feel a different sensation and hear a different sound that lets you know to scoop that unseen object into the attached basket.
Waders are optional for some. They’re not optional in my world, that’s for sure! Josh and I were digging in knee-deep water, but the water temperature was somewhere around 50 degrees. Yes, waders. And rubber gloves.
Baskets are needed to put your quahogs into. These baskets are kept afloat by tire inner tubes that are inflated and secured to said basket by plastic zip ties. The basket assembly is then tethered to the digger by a short leash of some sort.
And finally, the last thing needed for a quahog digging adventure is a license from the Town of Nantucket. These licenses can be had at the licensing window located inside the Nantucket Police Department lobby on Fairgrounds Road. Geezers like me (over 60 years of age) who are Nantucket residents are awarded a free white button. People can dig for quahogs year-round.
Josh and I eased our way out of Madaket harbor. The tide was very low and the channel buoys have not yet been set. Josh followed the track displayed on his GPS system while we both kept a sharp eye for new shoals.
The digging was fun. We were about twenty feet apart, close enough to talk and laugh about dumb things. We did so the entire time. The quahogs were relatively plentiful. We talked about how digging quahogs took us back to our respective childhoods. Scratching them up always makes me recall my annual trip with Oscar Bunting, one of the greatest Nantucket fishers ever. I would burden Oscar with my teenaged presence once a year on a nice summer day. Oscar would dig quahogs with a machine-like efficiency. He would laugh and give me tips on how to find the hard-shelled clams. Well, today I made Oscar proud! I had it going on, scratching up one quality clam after another. It made me smile to think of that great man once again.
One of the hard parts of digging quahogs is knowing when you have enough in your basket. I knew that my wife Beth wanted to make some stuffed quahogs (stuffies) and that I wanted a dozen or so small ones (cherrystones) for linguini and clam sauce, my North End favorite meal. Josh had similar goals. We had to talk each other into stopping our digging after that one last quahog. It was a perfect afternoon with a good friend.
Our mission was successful and completed in about an hour and a half. The only other people that we saw were some crazy kids in kayaks who looked like they should have had some warmer gear on. They had pulled up several hundred yards away and appeared to be digging via the foot method. You do you, kids. It’s all good.
I hope everyone enjoyed their Memorial Day weekend. Yes, Memorial Day weekend, not Figawi weekend. Yes, it was busy. Yes, people are coming from a lot of different places to get it going on Nantucket for a couple of days. Here’s hoping that our visitors enjoyed the island safely and kept things between the navigational buoys (a Jimmy Buffett saying). And here’s hoping that all of us took moment to remember the supreme sacrifices made by so many of our brave service members throughout our country’s 250 year history. Our freedom did not come for free. God bless our fallen heroes. And go scratch ‘em up if you get a chance.
Steve “Tuna” Tornovish is a Nantucket native who has spent his life fishing from the beaches of his beloved island. He loves to introduce clients to the joy of fishing with his Nantucket Island Fishing Adventures: stevetuna.com