Indian Island and the Geoduck Quest (3rd Edition)

I suppose the intent behind paternity leave is to provide a window for father and son to stare into each others eyes and develop a deep and lasting bond. But... given the tragedy that was last year's attempt and the non-event that was two years ago, I thought it would be better to celebrate his 1 month day by exposing the little man to some salty air while his father tried for geoduck redemption. Everyone got in on the act, with the hound searching for siphons and the wife/baby searching for steamers.
Isthmus Beach on Indian Island did not appear to host many steamers but the butter and horse clams are so thick that you can be treated to a mini-Bellagio style fountain show. More than once I took a shot of clam spit to the face while digging for his/her neighbor. It took hours of this research but I eventually settled on a couple positive ID methods and my apologies to the horse and butter clams that came home in the cooler because I didn't know what I was doing.
Trying to determine which hole ("show" for clam nerds) in the muck was a geoduck proved to be futile.

  • Show shape: Supposedly, the geoduck leaves a more oval show compared to the horse clams but that must apply to other beaches where the horse clams don't have oval siphons... 
  • Show size: Sorting by size of the hole in the muck also was hopeless. The horse clams can be pushing 1.5 pounds, which is pretty impressive but starts to make the bucket heavy in a hurry.
  • Depth: I eventually realized that if I started to feel the top of the neck or shell at 1-1.5' down, that was too easy and in no way could it be a geoduck. 
  • Siphon appearance: If I didn't see a siphon on the surface, I was 100% wrong for three whole hours. When showing, the horse clam has little feelers across the siphons while the geoduck is smooth. Lots and lots of pictures of horse clams and if I am not mistaken, that is an oval:
 
Part of my lack of success might have been the distractions of a really low tide. All sorts of animals were exposed or hanging out within reach of hip waders. In particular I was rounding up keeper sized red rock crabs and explaining to them that in another month they were going to want to be somewhere else when the season opens.
I also ran into some sea slugs, little flounders, a ton of the moon snails (still not tempted to eat one), and a few slimier monsters to haunt your dreams:
 
I even bullied this guy and stole his lunch money. Not sure how he was going to cash it in but he was dragging this healthy cockle. Since I have never gotten a cockle before, I did some google stalking and discovered that these suckers can jump! Now I feel guilty about the theft and the clam chowder. 
Within about 10 minutes of my cockle larceny I finally decided to admit defeat and head for the car. Turns out a negative attitude pays dividends and I stumbled onto a smooth clam nose! Not possessing a geoduck tube, I took the wide/shallow pit approach and just barely beat the approaching tide. Weirdly, one wall of my pit turned out to be a family of buried red rock crabs and they kept oozing out of the muck and into the hole. 
In my panic, the shovel work got sloppy and my first geoduck came out in several pieces. Going to need another expedition to get that classic phallic clam picture. And there will be future expeditions because these guys rate right up near the top of tastiest proteins I have gathered. The neck was skinned and sliced thin for munching raw and the "breast" was dunked in a skillet with butter/wine/herbs for 10-30 seconds. It sounds bonkers, even to myself from a few weeks ago, but its worth giving geoduck a shot.  

Oak requested the last word