Shellfishing in Ocean View - Open Wide (your browser too!)
Original drawings by Annie Moon were adapted for web-imaging by R K Puma
A version of text and images appeared in the Tidal Times, 1981

Clamming is a treat for those who spend fortunes on lures/bait for fishing. All's to it: you wade out at low tide and "educate" the toes. Acquired as Braille, you feel for them with your toes and if particularly adroit, you retrieve them between first and second toes!

We natives are hep that small clams (cherrystones) are aces for eating on the half shell with melted butter and/or cocktail sauce. Larger clams are best suited chopped, for chowders, fritters & stuffed clams. 

A neat-o tip comes from Bobby & Mary Lou Lebby of the Willoughby Inn is to freeze the chowder clams in the shell.  They open and none of the savory juices are lost or diluted. Sumbuddy had a "Eureka" moment.

Dad would put a bushel basket into an inner tube (a perfect fit) for his catch, usually at "11th Stop" in Willoughby Spit in those days; with a tow-rope tethered to his waist, tossing his catch as he waded. An old pillowcase will suffice but then you have to empty frequently because they are weighty, matey.

The Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel (HRBT) near the sunken sub furnishes concrete walls. Sometimes unwilling to wait to get them home, we have stunned visitors by cracking the clams on the concrete and eating them raw, then and there (not unlike the gulls on Outer Banks dropping them on Route 12 and often on vehicles traveling it). At the marina in Hatteras Village, if you hover when the boats arrive, you are called a pelican but that is a worthwhile derision come suppertime! A little more equipment is necessary when crabbing. A crab net is required because the little buggers are swift and as even small children can observe, equipped with pincers.

  Hampton Roads (aka Tidewater) conveniently furnishes us with piers, docks, bulkheads and jetties on which to catch Blue Crabs, foregoing the necessity of a boat. The best technique is to throw your line (chicken neck or wing first) and pull in slowly to scoop the critter up, when you see him just below the surface. What sport!
^<**>^

Crabs should be alive when cooked; if in doubt check the "french-doors" under its eyes: when pried there should be a response from the claws. 

Crabs are steamed, as are cherry-stone clams. Most folks prefer seafood seasoning like Old Bay™ and many folks use beer, thyme leaves, crushed red pepper. Softshell crabs are about universally fried; no way around it; so break out some tartar sauce for a change.

Traditionally, condiments to be included on your newspaper-covered picnic table are melted butter and a bowl of vinegar with a dash of garlic. Issue each "picker" a serrated steak knife and instruct expertly:
The gender of the crab is easily determined: the jimmie (male) has an apron on its underside which tapers symmetrically to a long point. The female has a broad apron, often brimming with an orange-brown sponge (compare the above with topmost image). If you lift the apron carefully, you can remove it and the bright red top in one motion. At this point, break off all appendages, saving the the large claws for cracking later. Remove also the "dead man" which is the fleshy, feathery and gray substance: it has no nutritional value but no one seems to know why it earned it's name.  In the female Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab ^<**>^  if fortunate, you'll find "mustard" (yellow to orange, saucy or crumbly) which is very delicate in flavor and the essential ingredient you'll find,
in She-Crab Soup.

After breaking the crab in half on its seam, take your knife and sever the knuckles (leg joints) from the body: as close to the edge of the torso as possible.  

You may then open each half with your fingertips at the knuckle joints in the same fashion that you would open your Bible to Psalms. Do ya' remember that one from Sunday School? Okay then, how 'bout if you open your Webster's to moonbeams? In so doing, all chambers are exposed and the succulent white morsels are yours for the taking.

ro@rkpuma.com

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Bait is relatively simple with a chicken neck or back and about five yards of kite string. If  soggy, tsk-- you've overcooked the crabs! Remove from steamer by using your built-in "color barometer" simply: when crabs are bright red or shrimp, a gorgeous sunset pink! With shrimp it's good to "pinch" off" heads and tails first with fingertips for easiest peeling.  

Scallops, shrimp and oysters are best left to the commercial fishermen to catch.  Ah, fishermen!   Gotta love 'em. Value and support them since the work is very 'risky biz'. Recent decades of skyrocketing costs indicate they are one dedicated group and becoming as endangered as their over-regulated catches. Oysters need an experienced hand to shuck 'em for eating freshly raw, on the half-shell but they'll pop right open when roasted for a short time; around here people lay 'em on a grill and cover with burlap or sumsuch.

Natch, it's great if you know the Cap'n of the "South Wind" to get fresh scallops when they come in! Days gone-by we'd ride the bridge (HRBT) to downtown Phoebus on Mallory and "STOP - Eat Dirt Cheap at Fuller's" when 'Nelly' Nelson served up collossal crab cakes with fries & slaw spilling over the edge of the plate.

Back when, you could't beat Joe & Steve's Friday night $-banger at the Camel for large shrimp, but you'd need to get there early to beat crowds. Not the same at all these days (sigh)...

How's this for a great wrap-up? Take heavy-duty foil (tearing at 12") and place a mostly shucked ear of corn, two small potatoes (red are nice), two small peeled onions, Kielbasa (Polish Sausage) and a chicken leg & thigh. Throw in some cherry stone clams and wrap securely and place directly on coals for an hour, depending on your fire. Turn them every ¼ hour or so.  Somehow the juices of these ingredients titanically compliment one another, so the only seasoning needed is paprika and a dab of butter!

Best shellfishing including in our own Chesapeake Bay it's said, is in those months not spelled with any "R's".

<*)))))><

Rockfish [aka Striped Bass] is from fall to the end of the holidays, but that's another webpage, gulls & gills! :)