Clams in... Crabs take a break

The Crab guy and I decided to try something a little different today. Instead of running out to our favorite crab haunt which by the way is really showing a big pick up in both quantity and quality of crabs we decided to try clamming.
Both of us have clammed up north in NJ and Long Island before so we aren't strangers to the art of clamming. But here in the south it seems a bit more of a challenge.
We headed out with an old rusty clam rake and made an effort to catch as much or close to our daily limit of 100 clams a piece. Well... The day started off very slow and within an hour or two we had a measly 11 clams. At least it was something since both of us have never clammed here before.
We then decided to look around and cast netted up a few finger mullet and drifted for whatever would jump on the hook. I caught a small bluefish and a black tip shark.
Can you feel the excitement here?
So with an hour left to our fishing day we then decided to head back to the pier. Looking over to my left on the way in I saw a nice shallow flat that at the very least we could pull the boat onto and try one last time to get the twelfth clam :)
Guy agreed to give it a shot.
Sun burnt, tired but still optimistic we anchored and jumped overboard. I dragged the rake over a small clump of sea grass and there it was... A clam, the twelfth clam! We both looked at each other and before I could comment, another and another.
This is already a long story so I won't use the cliche... to make a long story short.
We came home with a nice pile of clams!
I'm making my famous "clams casino" a la scampi style as I type. They sure smell good.

Update: Judy of Judy's Kitchen is also blogging about foods of Down East North Carolina and took some awesome photo's of the finished clams.
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