If you want your sleeves/arms to stay dry and warm go to LFS or Seattle Marine and buy the gloves that are like sleeves up to your pits best investment for SHOVEL clammers

Pfff, wimps!! bare hands right here....all the way!

Shovel - faster, easier, less cracked clams. I had to use a tube last night as CC, Todd and Rico and other were using my two shovels - both of which ended up broken. But every once in a while I got my shovel back and it was soooo much nicer doing it that way.

If you dig in the surf they are less than 8 inches down and one quick scoop with no dirt removed is all it takes.

Note the commercial calm diggers use shovels.

Using a tube is like using an upside down spinning reel...it'll work, but the real clammers are snickering at you

Fish on...

Todd

+1

Just saw a news blurb on NWCN, about the recent dig..Guns, shovels and a Black Lab digging his own hole..

Like old guide says, not that long ago a clam gun WAS a shovel. And nobody except a newbie ever called them a shovel. When the tubes came along, the popular terminology changed. But a lot of us still call the "shovel" a clam gun.

So I still use a clam gun - The tubes are too hard on my back and it takes longer to dig a limit. And I get better quality clams.

Shovel with a long handle so I don't have to bend over while pounding for show's.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

I use a shovel. Even though I could care either way what I used, I would get dis-owned by my family I used a tube.

I like the tube, it is a good work out. If you shove the tube all the way down to your knuckles, it is like doing dead-lifts. Just don't round out your back.

Never chased the razors so always used a shovel for butters and geoducks(rake for steamers). The geoduck with a shovel can be painful for the guy attempting to keep track of the damn thing. Lost a lot of skin arm deep in the hole with some over aggressive shovellers.

It isn't too environmentally friendly, but this is what a real shovel (scoop) looks like, this is only the upper half.

It is used for excavating Tar Sand in northern Alberta's tar sand oil fields.

+ another 1 there

My grandad is a spry 75 yrs old and would leave me on the beach if I were to use a tube. He still digs with a shovel and is always the first with his limit back at the truck sippin' on his whiskey/coke.

Shovels are much more effective anyway IMO. I broke nearly every clam I dug the only time I used a tube. Total b!tch to clean when broken.

Extra long shaft facilitates pounding sand for bearded clams, freshly shaven.

Agreed.

Fess up shovel boys, they are best used for hi-grading

I probably bust one clam outta 15 with the gun.....course I use a super secret squirrel gun

Good one ,Doc.Nofish,I'd never hi-grade a clam or two.What are ya talkin about,it just out ran/dug me and I missed it.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

P.S. I started out with the gun 12 years ago and had a hard time not breaking them,went to a shovel and didn't break as many,then got better @ it and don't break any nowa day's.Once you go shovel you
won't go back.

Shovel. Dang Doc, I bet you made yourself blush on that one!

As a teenager, I DID dig several with bare hands. I made a halfhearted attempt Friday night when we saw some with their necks out, but with a wounded finger I wasn't man enough to git er done.