GIANT CLAMS Catch and COOK! Coastal Foraging, Niantic River Connecticut!

good morning guys what is going on today we are doing some clayman on the niantic river out of connecticut we got our clam rakes here we got our baskets and let me show you what we're going for we're going after some beautiful clams do a catch clean cook for you guys and let me tell you it is blowing like 25 30 knots easily out here it's very windy the water is pretty chilly but we have an absolutely beautiful day not a cloud in the sky nice and sunny so let's see if we can find some clams [Music] so we're out here with carl and cara and victor is behind the camera and basically all we're doing is doing some ranking you gotta take your rake down and the dirt and running across the ground and sometimes you can hear when you catch when you get a clam in your basket but there is a ton of snails to catch a lot more snails when you're and catching also a lot of empty clam shells so sometimes you think you got something and you don't but sometimes you can feel them and sometimes you can hear them and you just gotta work it until you can feel and get into your break let's see if i got it i think i missed it see look at that bunch of snails brookie you need to snatch it up carl's getting doubles carl says he's getting doubles over here so yeah and do it not into the weeds but in the sand on the side you know around the leaves how can i see the weeds wow lots of weeds but i hear something i think i got one there we go first claim for me for the day all right there you go that's a little steamer put them in the basket one of uh what 50 more to go we got some seaweed salad i'll tell you what it's definitely windy out here it's blowing easy what 25 knots oh yeah windy and cold windy and definitely chilly you got this that's right there we go empty oh come on you gotta use the prongs of your rake to kind of get under them that one no i didn't thought it was but it's open both quahogs right both quahogs yeah this this one this one's got some weight to it that will just you know cut out for chad or clam sauce this is one of those times where you do not want to have a hole in your bladers or else you would be freezing especially if you're from florida like us so it's like 50 degrees out here and then the water temp is like 62 i think carl says so it's definitely chilly but it's well worth it because we're having clam chowder for dinner oh my god that's the one you lost that's a good small one for steaming but look at this giant thing holy holy that's a record for me look at that thing i think this is one of the ones that you'd want to keep for bait i don't know if you would want to be eating this giant thing in one bite that's not happening this is the kind of size that you want for steaming dipping in some butter one bite little clams this thing is ginormous but we're still keeping it isn't it cool look at it is that just because the shell is dirty or he's got like different colorings on him i think that probably part of the shell is in the dirt like this and that's why it's black and then the other half is out or it could be the opposite way maybe it's like this i'm not sure i can't see it is muck so you can't even see your feet even though the water is only up to like your waist so i can't see the clams down there so i don't know but you're digging your rake down and you got to get them out of the mud because they're all stuck down in there look at that giant that's a trophy trophies no way look i just got another one this one was on the surface maybe someone accidentally knocked it up and didn't actually get it in their basket sometimes you can be working on one really hard and you think you get in your basket and you pick it up and it's not in there and then you lose the spot you were in but this one was right on the surface so someone probably kicked it up over there three yeah you run into something and you gotta really dig your rake to uncover it shake it around and there you go look a little one all right let's see if this guy makes it so this is like your gauge to determine whether or not they're big enough if it falls through that hole then it's too small so this guy's a keeper uh-oh that means it's too small because it fell through yep too small he went through the hole so gotta let this guy go grow bigger i'll see you next year this is a good spot i mean these are giants but look he's got oh man that wind just like cuts through you know he's got some snails growing on him i just got another double put this one in the basket but look there's some weird snails out here if you guys know what kind of snails these are let me know i don't know what they are see if i can pop them off oh there goes one no idea comment down below if you know what kind of snails they are looks like it had been on there for a long time i can't get that one off there we go i think we found the honey hole vic what do you think i think doubles and one every rake oh i hear it you hear it deep one [Music] it must be a big one there's one that one i think there's a lot there i feel my rake keep hitting them gotta stay in the same spot maybe the smaller ones get into your rake easier versus the bigger ones obviously they're probably stuck more in the dirt so they're a little more difficult oh yeah i didn't see it that one i actually saw i've been standing in the same little area i think i can see another one right here so i haven't i haven't mucked up the dirt that much in this area because i've been standing in the same place and i just saw these two oh no this one's empty okay i'm gonna get this one oh i got it this time oh yeah baby oh that's it look you can see that i scraped it a bunch of times you see that that's from the rink scraping the shell trying to get it out of the muck there's that one i was looking for you can specifically hear when your rake goes over a clam and has a distinct noise to it i don't know if the sound comes through on the camera for you but oh there we go with a specific high-pitched noise you can kind of hear it big ones though huh not many little steamers big ones they're good for clam chowder so victor's gonna be making clam chowder tonight so those big ones are perfect for clam chowder because you don't really want to steam and eat those like as one biters kind of thing and i'm not really sure what i'm going to cook up yet you guys if you've watched my videos before know how much i enjoy cooking for my family so victor and i are going to be up in the northeast for probably at least another week so i don't know how i'm going to bring hams home to share with my family but we'll figure out something so i'm not going to say that this is hard work but you definitely got to put a little effort into it but i think this is a fun thing that anyone can go out and do your kids can do it your mom and dad your grandma your grandpa as long as you're in shallow enough water where they can stand well but very fun to come out here and do something so simple as just breaking up a dinner for yourself some coastal foraging there's another one see all the scrap scratches from my rake on it trying to get it out of the come on guys a monumental moment for first glance you've been working at it here you go guys what i'm hoping your viewers take away is really perseverance it doesn't always come easy you gotta dig in you gotta go for the gold and some people might have more innate skill but it's really just about grit i love it might not feed a family but it's still a symbol of personal instincts that's right why is the word spoken by kara i told her that was like me last year i was like how is everyone getting them but once you get the hang of it then they just keep coming because it's kind of you know you can't just scrape the surface you gotta dig and figure out where they are and how to get them out so it takes a little time then once you get the hang of it you start getting there you doubles another double another little snail oh no hermit crab little crab in there you see him come on little guy he's shy two more claims to add to the basket i'd have to say these are average twice as big as the ones we were getting last year huh yes so we're doing this at low tide we picked the time to come out when it was gonna be low tide obviously because you want to do this when it's as shallow as possible so it's only like two and a half feet deep here so it's kind of perfect you don't want to be doing it too deep when you're getting water in your waders or right now since it's windy and there's a little bit of a chop you don't want to be getting waves blown into this inside of your waders that would not be a fun time how's your basket doing over there yeah well your basket's a little smaller than oh i think yeah but okay hold yours out of the water here well you've done pretty well too coral these are way bigger than my shirt i know you know the ones that we were getting around the edges last year we had all different sizes yeah these seem to be mediums into larges i mean this isn't bad you know what i think part of the thing was is since we had two months of no climbing here in the river the crop it just grew i think that's part of it so we had two months and before that we i think we had about two week period where the river was closed because of rain and all that and uh so they check the bacterial levels and make sure they're safe for the consumption um what is the legal limit like how many are allowed okay this is a peck this this size basket once we fill this at the top that's that's it for that so we're allowed here um a total of four packs because there's four of us per person so if we were able to put these in there we definitely have like probably one and a half uh let me see what you got in there we yeah we probably have maybe one and one in the third we have plenty of room to get more clams more clams a bit literally we got to get back to work yes better get we're getting better get ranking here [Music] welcome back to the kitchen as you can see we are back in our kitchen in florida we are no longer up north in the cold weather we're back to the being like 80 degrees here and i told you guys that i wanted to cook the clams for my family and that we weren't going to be home for a couple weeks so i didn't really know how i was going to do that but i got clams and i did indeed buy them from the store so i don't know where these clams are from but do you know where all right so usa victim bought them from the store for me so i honestly don't know where they're from but these are the nice little small steamer size that you want no idea where they're from but you know you can do this too go to the store buy some claims and we're gonna do a seafood boil basically so i got these clams that i bought from the store i got some shrimp that i also bought from the store but i do have some floral lobster which we actually caught which you guys have seen plenty of lobster videos they freeze great so we always have lobster in the freezer so we got lobster clams shrimp we got some sausage corn little tiny gold potatoes as well as some red potatoes in there mushrooms if you've never done any seafood boil or any kind of boil without mushrooms you are missing out mushrooms are like the best part of the boil they just get absolutely delicious got some onions as well as some garlic and then the most important thing your seasoning for your water now typically i would probably use old bay which i only have a little bit left and for some reason publix was out of old bay we went to the seafood market they also didn't have old bag but the place where we got the clams had their own like basically seafood boil mixture it kind of tastes exactly like old bay so that's what we're using to put in the pot when we boil our water so let's get outside and get started all right so we are outside with the camp chef burner and it has rained every single day since we've been home all day long and it is literally like the first time it stopped reading so it's perfect to do this and i think we're going to eat outside so you couldn't have asked for better weather we got very lucky so the first thing we're doing we got our water boiling is putting in our seasoning [Music] oh yeah all right excuse me we're filming okay next thing is an entire head of garlic [Music] next is two onions just halved [Music] and two lemons also halved all right so we're gonna let this go for a while before we start putting in all our food [Music] alrighty so this has been going for probably a good 10 minutes or so now typically you'd want to put potatoes in like way before anything else but these are so small that i don't want them to cook too much and just become mush so these are going next next thing corn next mushrooms my favorite part stir this baby up a little bit [Music] next thing look at that got a good boil going on all right next thing lobsters next our sausage and next are clams looking real good it's gonna be fun and tasty so the final step is the shrimp because that's gonna be the thing that's gonna take the least amount of time to cook [Music] so bird gets to do all the cooking and i gotta do all the heavy lifting around here oh yeah let it drain a little bit is it hot enough oh no i could definitely hold it but i'm gonna let it drain the final thing we're going to do after victor just poured it on the table is douse everything in a little jo seasoning don't be stingy with that stuff that's great okay everyone find the scene and dig in i'm gonna dig into a lobster first you want me to take the bread out first thing i'm gonna dig into is a [Music] lobster [Music] come on what kind of clam is this that's a special plant that's a sausage look at that one thing about cooking clams is when you buy them they're live and when you cook them they open up that's how you know they're ready to go if you ever have one that's closed like this don't keep cooking it or try to pry it open that means it's probably dead that's why it didn't open up so do not try to mess with these ones everything was good as usual i think that's the ribbon as good as usual the corn the mushrooms especially the mushrooms and the corn they absorbed so much of that flavor i enjoyed my dinner i love the clams too man i didn't catch them the shrimp turned out really good it was fun we're outside eating it's it's great thank you bro nice meal i think it was all good i can't find something that i don't like it's just great everything was delicious it's like my mom said it's a fun meal great for a gathering everything just came out so well um and like my mom said there was nothing you didn't like it was all all delicious bravo brooke killed it she always killed it but this was a super fun meal everything was cooked perfectly and i loved picking out everything from the table and just everybody picking out what they wanted it was really fun thanks bro yeah i guess i agree with the general consensus that it's really fun to eat like this this kind of boil where everyone just kind of sits around and picks up the same food and every everything in it was good cooked amazing [Music] to be able to cook the lobster and the shrimp and the clams and all have them turn out perfect at the same time it's pretty pretty impressive and there's nothing you'd put your nose up to i really enjoyed everything mushrooms shrimp lobster the clams and the cool thing about this like brook said earlier these aren't even clams that we caught you guys can go to the grocery store and do this with your family and that's the important thing is you get a bunch of people together or you can do a big cookout with your friends so it's nice to have everyone together outside eating good food good job brooke well i told you guys that i wanted to be able to come home and cook a meal with my family even though we didn't bring any clams home and the next best thing buying them from the store just like you guys can do or you can go out there and catch clams on your own it's a very fun thing to do with your family anyone can clam anyone can eat them it was an absolutely delicious meal really fun like everyone said throw in whatever you want you know um were those things called crawfish raw fish crawfish you could do a crawfish boil lobsters mussels whatever kind of seafood that you enjoy throw it in there sausages whatever you like add it in a very fun meal so as always thank you guys so much for watching huge shout out for carl for taking us um climbing to begin with and i will see you guys in the next video and once again we had lobsters in the freezer brook was able to pull six out and we all got to share six lobsters but what i wanted to say in brooke's video is um she's getting close to 200 000 and i'm going to buy her dinner at sassafras at james's restaurant so everybody hit that subscribe button so we can get to 200 000 and we can all go to james's restaurant [Music] you

Channel: Brook Crist Outdoors

Views: 663,282

Keywords: giant, clams, catch, cook, coastal foraging, Niantic river, connecticut, catch and cook, clamming, catching clams, cooking clams, seafood boil, clam recipe, seafood recipe, brook crist, Brook Crist outdoors, saltwater, clam rake, family friendly, family dinner, country boil, fishing, clam digging, fishing girl, new england, clam boil, old bay, coastal foraging for dinner, outdoors, vacation, how to clam, how to catch clams, clamming in conneticut, river, wading

Id: B4TE-4Wa5wQ

Length: 24min 27sec (1467 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2020