Charles’ - Kick Ass Sea Bass

​ I’m shuffling around in ankle-deep saltwater with my toes pointed out, like a warm weather penguin trying to use my feet to sense lumps of food hidden on the ocean floor. Clenched by my right hand, waiting to plunge, is a stainless steel cylinder about seven inches round with a hole the width of a pen on the top of it, and a handle welded to the end. I’ve since named this shimmering tool The Clam Cannon – and with it, we’re hunting piss clams. 

Within the first minute, my guide to all things clam, Charles, reaches into the water and quickly produces a quahog and hands it to me like the oceanic version of a truffle pig. It’s not the piss clam we were looking for, but occasionally the quahogs find their way out of the eel grass and into the sands closer to shore and are a welcome addition to the meal.

I’d come looking for a food experience, and until now, I’d never had my hands on a piss clam or heard of a quahog. The piss clam has a soft shell exterior and what looks like a clam-sized elephant trunk or clam penis worming around from one end. Akin to the smaller version of a geoduck (often seen sacrificed in dramatic fashion on Iron Chef), they garner their nickname from the water they spit or piss out when harvested. 

 As for our little seafood friend, the quahog, it is slightly larger in size, darker, with a harder shell, and so far isn’t spitting anything anywhere. With a soft, chewy center, the quahog can be eaten raw right out of the water. 

Shuffling along, Charles spots a small dent in the sand in about a foot of water. He plunges his clam cannon through the water and into the sand while the air pushes out from the hole and bubbles to the top. Then, putting his thumb on the hole to capture the contents, he gently pulls up the sand and releases the contents onto the ocean floor. In goes his hand to sift around through the contents, and up comes a soft shell clam – one more for the dinner pot!

No one knows this stretch of saltwater quite like Charles, who's been sifting around part penguin and part pig looking for clams here since his grandmother first brought him out at ten years old. As local as the red soil, his great-grandparents moved here in 1880, and the family has been living in the Poplar Grove area ever since. The furthest he’s ever moved was 175 feet to the waterside home we left from today. If anyone was going to know just where to plunge the clam cannon, it was Charles.

Under attack by horseflies, we continue to wobble around like drunken penguins while Charles pulls out one clam after another. He mentions that he usually does this when the tide is out, but he’s working around my schedule today, which I appreciate. After ten minutes of me finding exactly nothing, Charles physically controls my every move until I “find” a quahog that he has his toe on. Charles measures it to confirm it meets the 50mm size minimum, and once we have enough legal-sized ocean delights for a meal, Charles asks if I’ve ever eaten a raw oyster. I tell him about my Malpeque Bay experience from the previous day, and like a lot of people in P.E.I., everyone seems to know everyone, and Charles mentions he knows Chris the oyster farmer well.  

He pops the quahog open with a knife before running the blade under the meat, similar to the harvest of the oyster, hands it to me, and tells me to enjoy! The consistency, in comparison to the oyster, is dense and a lot meatier. To get the full effect, I slurp then chew before swallowing. The taste is salty, but the flavour is light and subtle. It’s not recommended to eat the soft shell clam raw at this size, so they stay in the bucket awaiting a hot pot.

Our shuffle and search for fresh raw food wraps up, and I’m quite content with the brief experience. I think we’re headed back to his place to cook-up quahogs and clams as we jump back in his boat, The Sandie Crack, lovingly named for his wife Sandie. We glide through the Conway Narrows, but instead of turning back, we head to deeper water. ​

Charles confirms that I like fishing and soon has us parked in a narrow passage with a couple of rods fitted with some bare red jigs. We’re officially mackerel fishing! Before the line finishes going out, we’ve caught our first mackerel. I think Charles and I are getting along well enough to let out my first lame joke of the day, and I proclaim “Holy Mackerel!” as we both reel away. I laugh while he groans and unhooks us both. 

With a 12” minimum, mine doesn't make the cut, and back it goes in the water just in time for Charles to hook up a double header. Another forty-five seconds pass, and Charles hauls out yet another mackerel. There’s a limit of twenty per day, which, if he’s up for it, he’ll keep all twenty to take to the home of his best buddy Joey, where they smoke them in a charcoal smoker. Today, I soon learned, we are not planning to eat any of these; the plan is to keep a few as bait for the much larger sea bass that enjoys the taste of mackerel as much as the fishermen.

As Charles pulls up mackerel after mackerel, he says that if he has to wait more than ten minutes to catch something, he moves. I fish quite regularly, but in my experience, if I’m not catching something in an hour, I’m moving. However, I don’t have the abundant ocean out my back door.

Just as we’re getting started, my expert guide already has all the mackerel he needs, and we’re off to a long strip of sandy island beckoning us on the horizon. 

We pull up onto this desolate piece of land like Jacques Cartier and begin to stake our claim. Out of the boat and onto the beach go some buckets, a cooler, a couple of lawn chairs, our fresh mackerel, and some fishing rods. Charles lays out a work area with a thick glass cutting board and razor-sharp fillet knife. Then, across from it, he rearranges some of the soft red sand to form a crater and gathers some driftwood for a fire. While the wood crackles, he cuts the mackerel into chunks on the glass board, baits a line, and catapults the bait & hook into the ocean. From clams to quahogs, we are now stalking sea bass.

These sea bass are going to be a touch more like the fishing I'm used to. No guarantee here. Hold tight, and if they hit, keep the tension on the line while they wear themselves out, then reel like there’s a million dollar bass bounty on his head.

Within 15 minutes, the line hits like a greyhound chasing a racing rabbit! I eagerly, maybe too eagerly, start to reel hard before Charles gently reminds me to let him run a little, but keep control until Mr Sea Bass can be seen splashing in the lapping shoreline waves. Charles keeps an eye on me, and once we're close enough, he gives the word: “Ok, pull him in, take em’ home”.  

The Striped Sea Bass comes out of the water in a beautiful shimmering green and gold colour, dripping with saltwater like the sweat of a Gladiator. He’s lost the battle, but still fights like a warrior. Charles quickly pins him on the glass board to measure and confirm he’s of legal size. I can feel a surge of centuries-old hunter-gatherer instincts of accomplishment flood my mind with hot-blooded endorphins. It’s official, I have my first sea bass!

As the sun begins to set, Charles has the fire settled down to glowing red coals and a light, flickering flame. I’m standing with my line in the water, hunting for another hit. While I fish, I notice Charles has a full grill over the fire. He has somehow smuggled steaks and oysters out to this experience as a backup in the event the quahog, clam, and sea bass buffet didn't come through. Having accomplished everything he’d set out to do, he is now testing steaks for doneness with a pair of tongs and shucking a few oysters while quahogs simmer in a pot. 

I’m two hands deep on the bass rod, and Charles appears beside me with a fresh oyster in one hand and a driftwood-grilled steak, sliced and skewered in the other. Overwhelmed and out of hands, I grip the rod with my knees to save Charles from needing to hand-feed me! There is no restaurant in the world with service this good.

Fishing, steak, seafood & salty air coupled with the ambience of a beach fire and the soothing sounds of the ocean, it couldn’t get any better – Charles has orchestrated the fishing adventure of adventures today, touching on many of my favorite activities! While I’ve been giggling like a kid who's been smothered in cotton candy, then handed a pony, this man I’d met four hours earlier has since upped the game with hand-delivered surf and turf grilled over decades-old driftwood. I’m one more endorphin hit away from overdosing on this P.E.I. saltwater speedball. 

Rarely would I want an experience like this to end, but the sun has officially set, and like the stoned kid at the birthday party whose just eaten a whole sheet cake, I seriously don’t think I can take any more of this. 

While my fishing buzz wears off, we pack up and work our way back in the dark through a series of lights that illuminate the ocean as Charles gives me a harbour tour and winds things up back at his seaside home. 
​

I feel like the expression Salt Of The Earth People could summarize the profoundly humble, welcoming, and kind qualities of the people from PEI. Charles would top that list and definitely knows how to pull off a clam, quahog, and kick ass sea bass experience!

Recipe: 

Clams & Quahogs

Soft Shell/Steamer/Piss Clams & Quahogs:

• 2-3lbs of PEI Conway Narrow Clams
• 4 TBSP butter

    Option A: Crack open the quahog (not the piss/ soft shell clam) like an oyster, then suck and slurp them down ankle-deep in the Atlantic.

    Option B: Scrub the clams clean and then let them soak in salt water for 20 minutes in the hopes they will spit out any sand or impurities. Rinse them, then soak in new cold salt water and let them stand for a further 20 minutes.

    Next, place 1-2” of salt water in the bottom of a pot, and if you have a steamer rack, place it in the pot and add the clams. If not, just place the clams in the water.

    Steam for 5-10 minutes, then remove the clams and let them cool slightly. Reserve some of the salty broth to dip the clams in for flavour and as a final rinse before eating. Any unopened or foul-smelling clams should be discarded.

     Melt your butter and dip the clams in the butter before eating.

    Option C: If you’re looking to impress your dinner guests, you can cook the clams in a similar fashion to fresh mussels. Say, a white wine, garlic, and shallots broth with fresh parsley served with some slices of fresh baguette for dipping. 


Kick Ass Sea Bass:

• 1 P.E.I. Striped Sea Bass
• 6 TBSP Butter
• Salt & Pepper

Track down Charles (good luck) or get your hands on a fresh P.E.I. Striped Sea Bass from a fishmonger. Clean and fillet the fish. Pan sear in a hot pan over driftwood in melted butter. Add salt and pepper to taste.

​Serve all of the above meals next to a driftwood fire on the beach at sunset for maximum enjoyment. Or if you really want to blow someone's mind, hand serve them any one of these freshly cooked proteins while they're trying to hunt down their next sea bass.