Dreams Come True: Clamming At Ninilchik

Tuesday August 3rd 2012

Ninilchik another small fishing village that we visited. The village is at the mouth of the Ninilchik river and was settled in the early 1900s.

Ninllchik has several old dovetailed buildings and and old Russian Orthodox church.

We stayed at Deep Creek camp ground for $10.00 a night, which has the best eagle watching in the spring, as many as 90 eagles will be on the beach at one time. We did see a few eagles but mostly sea gulls.

Early morning the fishermen come to the beach to have their boats launched with the help of tractors, never saw this before.

We met this couple on the beach cleaning their clams and they were nice enough to give us a lesson. They had picked 90 clams that day. Well we decided to give it a try but first we need a few items. First a one day fishing license for both of us $20.00 each a pair of gloves that come up to your elbows $16.00 each, boots for me $20.00, Mike had his waders he used for Salmon fishing. Then we had to rent the clam digger and bucket $5.00 total $97.00. Well we dug up 20 clams maybe a pound and a half, which comes to $64.00 a pound. You can buy the razor clams for $14.00 a pound, but what fun we had.

Leland got up early with us and we headed to the beach where the clams are. Best clamming is at low tide and Friday morning was a perfect tide for clamming. The mud was so deep in the first spot we tried, I fell face first into it right off the bat, so for 3 hours I was pretty much covered in mud but by the end of adventure the guys had just about as much on them as I did. I just got an early start. Leland did get a picture of me in the mud and I downloaded to mu computer, as I was putting it on the blog I lost it. Woops.

Let me tell you this is not for the faint of heart this is real work. The little suckers are fast and you have to dig deeper and faster then they do. Just a dirty job but we endured and got our share although a very small share. At the end of 3 hours we were done, never again.