132 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 22, 1911. 
laid down my knife and rebelled with all the 
pomp and decisiveness of a professional Central 
American secessionist. As the cooking proceeded 
I began to consider another trench to steam them 
open, and as an experiment laid a few on the 
hot coals. They opened in no time and the 
samples proved so delicious with the addition 
of a little hot butter and vinegar that our appe¬ 
tite for these succulent morsels on the half shell 
was relegated to the background. 
The construction of our clam pit delayed the 
dinner call until nearly 2 o’clock, and the faint, 
appetizing aroma of cooking clams that persisted 
in tickling our nostrils oniy served to whet our 
appetite the more during our enforced wait. 
With his watch in one hand and a forked stick 
in the other, Doc hovered over the clam pit and 
told off the slowly dragging minutes while we 
gathered about on the warm sand to contem¬ 
plate the steaming dinner. He chided us and 
bade us to be patient and of good courage and 
to master our appetites until the aromatic pit was 
ready to yield its nutritive contents to grace the 
feast, and we waited impatiently I must con¬ 
fess until he uncovered the clams. Scooping out 
a heaping bucketful that looked good enough to 
eat, Doc unloosened his belt and took several, 
while the rest of us watched the experiment. 
He buttered and vinegared a pair and dropped 
them into his mouth. Simultaneously a sad, dis¬ 
appointed look stole over his face and he shoved 
the balance from him with the announcement 
that the roasted oysters had completely destroyed 
his appetite for clams. 
Toward the latter end of the meal I sampled 
one and discovered that the clams we had so 
painstakingly dug and cooked were of a variety 
designed primarily for bait and bouillon. So 
that is the reason why the most enjoyable part 
of our shore dinner was left for the gulls and 
the crows—scavengers of the land and the sea— 
for the fowls of the air alone possess those pe¬ 
culiar organs that require a judicious mixture 
of sand and gravel to promote the proper assimi¬ 
lation of food. 
We hove to. That’s a proper sea expression 
and I suppose you can heave to just as well in 
a rowboat as in a three-master. Anyway, we 
dropped anchor alongside of the breakwater one 
afternoon right after dinner to wait for our 
wives, and looking down into the briny deep 
both Doc and I saw a couple of dozen fat 
oysters resting invitingly upon a flat stone with¬ 
in easy reach. We had never eaten oysters 
fresh plucked from their bed. The sum and 
total of our oyster-eating experience had been 
limited to frys and raws, scallops and cocktails. 
So far as actual knowledge was concerned, the 
succulent bivalve was familiar to us only in 
pints, quarts and paper pails. 
Having seen them on the half shell, there was 
no mistaking their identity, and we reasoned that 
if there were two dozen oysters on this particu¬ 
lar stone, there must be at least a quart of 
shucked ones in the immediate vicinity or con¬ 
cealed somewhere about the half mile- of break¬ 
water, and now that the tide was going out, we 
might just as well have them as someone else, 
so rolling up our sleeves we prepared to garner 
our harvest. Each grabbed a couple and gave 
them a gentle tug. Then we pulled long and 
Jiard ^nd steady. Doc looked at me and I 
looked at him. Neither said a word. Emitting 
a grunt that boded evil, Doc reached for his 
hunting knife, which he always carries whether 
on a fishing trip or hunting in the heart of the 
Adirondacks. It was a tried and true bit of 
steel that had answered many useful purposes, 
from cutting wood for camp-fires to dressing 
deer, and he now attempted to pry one off with 
it, but the oyster did not yield. 
“What we need,” said he with much disgust, 
“is a jimmy, and as we have none in our fish¬ 
ing kits, what do you say to taking the girls and 
going after escallops?” 
If there had been a marlinspike or a belay¬ 
ing pin in our boat I would have pried off one 
of those oysters, but there was none, so I con¬ 
sented. Thirty minutes of brisk pulling brought 
us to the “flats.” The flats were several acres 
of sandbar covered by a thick mat of seaweed 
and a few inches of water at ebb tide. The 
number of tons of seaweed piled on these flats 
during each flood tide depends upon the wind 
and the roughness of the bay. Judging from the 
amount washed up every twenty-four hours dur¬ 
ing our stay the stuff seems more prolific than 
alfalfa. Stripping off our shoes and stockings 
we waded out into the mess. I very indiscreetly 
stepped on a crab with a back like a rip saw. 
Doc began his experience by picking up a small 
transparent jellyfish, and yelling a loud warning 
for the rest of us to let the things alone. He 
informed us in the same breath that the inno¬ 
cent looking things stung like nettles. We took 
him at his word. 
We had been told that this place was con¬ 
sidered ideal by those who had the time and in¬ 
clination to pick escallops up, but to greenhorns 
like us it looked as if we would be more suc¬ 
cessful if we could locate them with a contri¬ 
vance like a dip needle, or a crotched stick of 
apple tree wood such as old-time well diggers 
used to detect underground watercourses with. 
However, we quickly found that under our bare 
feet they felt almost as large as a dinner plate. 
Approximately 98 per cent, of whatever we step¬ 
A VICIOUS jerk at your line, a sudden boil¬ 
ing of the water thirty or forty yards 
astern of the boat, and then a steady 
strain on the tackle that tells you that the fish 
is hooked—and you land him, or you don’t. It 
depends a great deal upon how rapidly you 
keep the line coming in, for a favorite trick of 
the bluefish is to swim up upon a slackened line 
and shake the hook free. Do not despise the 
man who uses a hand line. He loses quite as 
many fish as the rod fisherman, especially when 
his hands get tender from constant hauling and 
the fish all seem possessed with a notion of 
making ugly side runs, which upset every cal¬ 
culation and draw the line across cuts that sting 
and burn until it takes courage to even attempt 
to hold the line. 
There never was a trout, and a two- or three- 
pounder at that, which could put up a better 
fight than a bluefish. If you do not believe it, 
ped upon would prove to be escallops; the other 
2 per cent, were crabs half buried in the mud. 
This method of escalloping has its disadvantages. 
The majority of the shellfish you come in con¬ 
tact with by the sense of touch are in their in¬ 
fancy, and it does permit of a nice discrimination 
as to size. In the course of an hour the four 
of us had picked up half a bushel or so that we 
considered worth opening, when scallops were 
suddenly driven from our minds by a new diver¬ 
sion. My wife unearthed a clam nearly big 
enough for a charity chowder. Forty sore fingers 
and four more clams were the net results. We 
did not have the right kind of clam hooks, so 
we gave it up. 
By this time the tide was nearly at its lowest 
and we noticed that little jets of water were 
being thrown up wherever there was a bit of 
immersed seaweed. The phenomena was due to 
the efforts of the much sought scallop to propel 
himself out of the tangle and into the deep 
water. Heretofore we had considered seaweed 
about as useful as a hole in a rubber boot, but 
now we perceived that nature had decreed that 
it should serve as a connecting link between the 
escallop and the human stomach. Effectively 
trapped and exposed to the light of day as the 
escallops were, it was but a matter of minutes 
and industry to gather as many as we wished. 
Knives in hand, Doc and I sat down on a bit 
of sandy beach with a broken nosed pitcher be¬ 
tween us and began removing the ear or edible 
muscle. Immediately a horde of mosquitoes 
rushed to the field of carnage and began to 
puncture our tender skins full of blood-gushing 
holes. Never in all my experiences have I en¬ 
countered mosquitoes that possessed such sharp 
beaks and strong neck muscles as those of the 
salt water marshes. They encouraged industry 
and we rushed our self-imposed task to comple¬ 
tion. Thankful for a day’s fun in the open, we 
surveyed our quart and a half of solid meats 
and acknowledged that escallop opening is a job 
for a darkey with a big thick thumb. 
try to land one some day upon an ordinary fly- 
rod. He will fight you from the minute he first 
feels the point of the hook to the time when he 
has been thrown into the fish-box, and then, when 
you endeavor to unhook him, it is likely that he 
will leave you with a memento of the day’s 
work in the shape of a finger bitten to the bone, 
if you do not go about the job in an under¬ 
standing way. 
Aside from his gameness, however, and to 
get right down to the baser, but more material, 
reasons, the bluefish is mighty good eating. 
Fresh from the salt water, and cooked as he 
should be cooked, again you can compare him 
with the trout, and the trout loses no prestige 
if you say that you have no choice, for no man 
ever ate a bluefish and found it other than ex¬ 
cellent. 
There is no doubt but what these two qual¬ 
ities of the blue, his ability as a fighter and his 
Bluefishing 
By FREDERICK ARTHUR DOMINY 
