There’s an old French-Acadian song whose title translates to “We’re going to Prince Edward Island” that we always listened to before and after trips to my parent’s hometown on the island every summer.
Its chorus identifies PEI as the country of the sun and one who’s beauty has no equal. But there’s a line in the song that speaks to me directly. It states that there’s nothing comparable to walking on a sandy beach and digging for clams in Egmond Bay, the area where my parents are from.
The song, (by the band Panou) and PEI in general, always brings memories of family, potlucks and adventure. But for me, PEI doesn’t mean potatoes, lobsters and Anne of Green Gables. It conjures up memories of hunting for edible treasure on PEI’s famous red beaches: clams!!
And now, one of our kids’ favourite activities on Prince Edward Island is clam digging. A variety of clams can be handpicked almost right off the shore. All you need is a rake or a shovel and a bucket, and some hard work and patience.
Our go to places are north-west of Summerside, in the French Acadian region along the Northumberland Strait where my family is from.
At the lowest of the low tides (check a tide calendar), usually on the days around a full moon or a new moon, you can spot “fishermen” heading out into the water with a water shoes, a rake and some sort of container. The container is often a four-gallon bucket, but innovation being what it is in PEI, you can find some locals heading out with rubber dinghies or even canoes! Some will have fashioned their own floatable containers using a bucket, a piece of plywood and an inner tube.
It’s a good idea to read up on some of Fisheries and Oceans Canada regulations regarding clam digging, and be on the lookout for signs posted on beaches.
Wading thigh deep in water, you head out a few sandbars away, and on the ocean side of the sandbar and rake. The clams are only a few inches from the surface, but because you are in the water, you can’t see them. Because the shells are hard, you feel them with the rake; it feels like raking a rock (and sometimes, it is). Once you feel the clam, you simply pick it up, put it in your container and keep going. (This is a great video from RadioLynx Content that shows how to dig and then cook and eat your clams.)
There’s a size limit on bar clams, 4 inches in diameter, and a catch limit of 100 per person. As a family, we’d go out as a group (sometimes 20 people!), meaning we could catch a fair amount.
We’d eat some there and then, but we’d also can them to be eaten any time during the year when we needed a reminder of the Island. (With bar clams, there are some parts that you don’t eat
But the tastiest ones, as far as I’m concerned are the piss-clams, or soft-shelled clams. These are found in bays and estuaries, at the confluence of freshwater and saltwater. They are called piss clams because when you pick them up, they have a tendency to squirt water from it’s black siphon. We would pick a bucketload and steam them as a late evening snack.
Piss clams are somewhat trickier to pick than bar clams, but all you really need is a shovel, a bucket and patience. As you walk along the shore at low tide, you look for little holes, eyes, in the ground. Carefully, you insert the shovel about 6 inches from the hole and dig one big scoop, careful not to break the fragile shell. Each hole has one clam, but they need to be at least 5cm in diameter to harvest.
You can also find razor clams and quahogs fairly easily, but mussels and scallops are usually only farmed. And you aren’t allowed to harvest oysters.
Many cottages along the coast will have rakes and buckets you can borrow, but if you don’t to adventure out on your own, there are a some tour guides who will take you out for your own treasure hunt. These include P.E.I. Coastal Tours and Experience, located in the west end, Experience PEI, located in Charlottetown and Trinity Cove Adventures, in the east end.
In Panou’s words, when it comes to PEI “on veut toujours s’en aller” (we always want to go!) – clam digging that is!
