What’s impressed me the most; however, is how the Head Chef, Drew, and Sous Chef, Brian, approach their commitment to serve and support local products.  When I offered to supply them with local single oysters they were very excited, and they asked me if I would speak with their staff at “Directional” on Friday afternoons.  I’ve learned that “Directional” is their pre-service meeting to prepare for the night’s dinner service; they usually have a couple of local suppliers there to educate the waitstaff about the local products they are serving.  The waitstaff taste different foods and wines for the night and discuss not only how it is prepared/served but also how it is harvested and brought to market.  This is a great approach and it only serves to make the dining experience at Fleet Landing that much better.

    We have the Boone Hall Lowcountry Oyster Festival coming up this weekend, and although they don’t serve local oysters, it is always a good time.  The festival really gives a lot of people the opportunity to be “introduced” to oysters and I think that’s great.  However, if you’re not familiar with the difference in taste between our local bushel of Bulls Bay oysters and a box of the Gulf single oysters then I recommend that you buy some of the gulf singles at one of the seafood retailers in town and order several bushels of local oysters from me and do a taste test!  Invite all of your friends and let me know the results of your oyster roast taste test.

The weather should be perfect for oyster roasts this weekend, not too cold, not too warm.   People who are having a planned and organized oyster roast often order from me weeks or months ahead of time.  I also have a lot of customers who decide that they want to buy oysters on the spur of the moment, and that is fine, too.  Those types of oders usually start coming in on Monday, but by Wednesday or Thursday, I can usually expect to have about twice as many bushels ordered as I did on Monday.  It’s a great business that I really enjoy, and I truly appreciate the loyalty of all of my customers!

  

Also here’s a video that Will McNelis put together from the hour of tedious pan shots I took with a cheeeaaap camera.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY3BOIrUY98
 
Actually, there’s no footage of me in this video because I was holding the camera!  This was taken just before Christmas on the Miss Henrietta, a 45′ carolina style (nc) shrimp trawler.  It starts off with the ride out in the dark (5 am) then shows some dragging of the nets (all you see are the cables in the water) then ends with some running back in and when the music starts we are in the final approach to McClellanville.  Will McNelis did a great job of editing the footage I took, thanks Will!
 
Other info:
engine – 671 Detroit
cruise speed – 7.5 kts (9 kts going with max current)
trawl speed – 1.8 to 2.2 kts
net size – two 45′ white shrimp nets
draft – 2.5 feet (yes, two and a half feet…there is a channel in the hull designed for the prop to be about halfway up into the hull)
captain – Richie Billington

 I believe that the customers would even be willing to pay extra if they knew it was truly local seafood.  For an experiment I think it would be interesting to see what sells more from the ’specials’ board:

IMPORTED Shrimp Dinner – Thailand – $18.95

U.S.A. Caught Shrimp Dinner – Texas - $19.95

LOCAL Caught Shrimp Dinner – Shem Creek – $20.95

…will any restaurants do this experiment?  This is a win-win opportunity if the result is that the LOCAL shrimp sold more than the other two specials. 

A lot of chef’s/kitchen managers say the local shrimp costs too much and it hurts their food costs, their measure of efficiency/profitability. However, if you could get $1 more per local shrimp entree then you could afford the better, fresher local shrimp. 

Let’s say, just for example, local shrimp cost $8 per pound and other shrimp cost $6 per pound (same size).  If there is a third of a pound of shrimp in an entree (10 shrimp) then the restaurant would have a shrimp cost per entree of $2.67 for local, and $2.00 for the other.  By raising the price of the LOCAL entree $1 and proudly marketing it as LOCAL you could actually INCREASE your profits, you would make 33 cents more per entree of local shrimp, thus you would decrease your food costs.

1/2 pound of shrimp per entree gives you costs per entree of $4 local, $3 other – in this example a 1/2 pound portion is your breakeven point.  Does anyone serve more than a 1/2 pound of shrimp per entree?

If anyone you know is thinking about an oyster roast then please give them my number or send them to this site…thanks in advance.  We’ve been delivering the oysters we harvest for the past 6 years and most of the new business comes from referrals from previous customers.  There’s a good core group of people that have ordered from me every year for the past 6 years and I’m very happy to see that core group growing each year. 

What surprises me is what they say about McClellanville oysters or Bulls Bay oysters as compared to Beaufort oysters…they say that the McClellanville or Bulls Bay oysters are muddier and smaller and that they recommend the Beaufort oysters because they’re bigger and cleaner; the Beaufort oysters also cost between $32 and $39 plus tax per bushel.  Now, I do agree that Beaufort has some pretty oysters, but they are the same oysters I pick right here in the Charleston area, the Eastern Oyster (Crassostrea Virginica) , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Oyster .  So, when you hear someone say “Beaufort oysters are better than McClellanville or Bulls Bay oysters” then just remind them that it all depends on who’s picking the oysters and who’s washing the oysters.

Cook the oysters until about half of them are just opening then dump them on the table and eat.  When using a cooker/steamer you will notice that the oysters are ready as soon as the steam starts to escape the lid covering the pot…this means that the oysters are starting to open and the water inside them is being steamed off.  When cooking them over a fire you will have to just continue to lift up the burlap sack (or beach towel) to visually check to see if they’re opening.

Save your shells and place them in one of the many SCDNR recycling bins throughout the county.

For example, I’ve been working on a shrimp boat out of Mcclellanville for the past couple of months and we’ve been catching big, pretty white shrimp that count 10-15 per pound and 16-20 per pound.  We’ve been selling these for less than $4 per pound right off the boat.  Most people we sell to are friends or friends of friends; it’s sort of an underground market, but if you’re in the know you can stock up your freezer for the year on some of the best shrimp around. 

There are two ’seasons’ for the big white shrimp:  during September through December we catch 10-15 count and 16-20 count white shrimp and during the first two weeks of the shrimping season, usually in June, we catch about the same size roe shrimp.  If you are shrimp eater, then these are the times to buy about 50 to 100 pounds (depending on the size of your family) and put them in the freezer in portioned ziploc bags. 

Leave a comment if you are interested in this and we can coordinate things; it’s a great thing to come up to McClellanville and have lunch or maybe do some shopping or touring in town while you wait for the shrimp boat to come in and sell you shrimp from the last drag of the day.

Local restaurants could benefit from this as well because they could keep their inventory of LOCAL shrimp available for the customer all year long…and at a price that more often than not beats the food distributor prices.

We’re going shrimping again in the morning and I’ll let you all know how it goes.

Hydraulic line leak – replaced line

Oil line failed – replaced line (these were the only 2 lines not already replaced).

VHF Radio not transmitting – replaced

Alternator not charging – removed, tested good, replaced, installed 2nd ground

Tri-Net winch bad seal – replaced seal, 10 days later replaced whole motor

Installed new deck lights, jukebox radio, stove (we have heat!!)

Boat is getting in good shape.

Clamming is hard on your back.  Simply put, it’s like tilling up your front yard, the whole yard, with a three-tined rake and collecting the rocks in a basket as you go.  I’d say that in an average spot you would get one bag of clams, 250 per bag, in an area of about 25’ by 10’.  That comes to about 1 clam per square foot.  Today I dug 500 clams, two bags, and my back is killing me!  Stephen dug 1000.

There are a few tricks you can do to speed up the process.  First of all, if you want to get your boat floating as soon as possible then don’t load your clams or oysters in it while it’s ebbed out, just set them in their bags or baskets next to the boat; the weight of a couple bags of clams or bushels of oysters can add an hour or more to your wait.  Also, if you have a flat bottom boat, you can spin your boat around so the bow is facing the incoming tide and as the tide fills in underneath your bow, you can load a few bushels as far forward as possible; this can help to lift the stern of the boat where most of the weight is due to the engine, fuel, and battery.  If you have a couple other people with you then you can also push the boat through the mud and into the water, but this is often not possible…so don’t count on this approach.  I’ve spent the better part of a night being ebbed out and it’s no fun.  It can get cold with a dew or fog and a cool breeze and you’re almost always wet to begin with if you’re trying to get your boat floating again.

One afternoon my brother-in-law and I went exploring in a new creek when the tide was falling with the sun.  We went way up in to this new creek and started to find good clams.  We loaded the boat and started out of the creek about an hour before sunset.  What we didn’t realize is that on the way in to the creek, we crossed over several sandbars that were not visible on the higher tide.  When we started out of the creek we realized that these sandbars were now exposed and we were like fish trapped in a pond.  We couldn’t get the boat across these dry sandbars and the tide was still falling.

About an hour or so after dark, we had enough water to push the boat over the first sandbar, so we unloaded all of the clams and got in the water and pushed.  We were in waist deep water pushing and pulling the boat on both sides of the sandbar.  When we crossed the first bar we re-loaded all of the clams and started motoring out of the creek; we were soaking wet, but we were so happy to heading home that we both opened a beer to celebrate the near disaster.  We noticed the fog was setting in, but it didn’t matter because we were on the way back to the dock and back to the house where a hot shower and a hot meal was waiting for us.  Then all of a sudden the boat came to a grinding halt.  We had hit another sandbar.  It was about six inches under water but it was also about twenty feet long which gave us little hope of pushing the boat across until more water filled in.  So we unloaded the clams again, got wet again, and pushed and pulled and waited for the tide.   Needless to say, with our luck this night, we encountered another sandbar further down the creek, but that was OK because we had the process down and we set to the task again of getting the boat across.  Once we crossed the third and last sandbar we thought we were home free so we loaded the clams back into the boat, pushed off from the sandbar and tried to crank the motor.  It didn’t crank.  Our battery gave out on us either due to the fog or the water that was splashed over it during the process of getting the boat across the last three sandbars or just plain bad luck.

It’s now about ten o’clock at night in February, we had a cool breeze mixed with fog or dew.  So, we rigged a sail with a paddle as the mast and a tarp as the sail.  We used the foot of the motor as our rudder.  Using this jury rig got us all the way out of the creek and onto the Intra-Coastal Waterway, but once we got there, the wind was no longer helpful and we had to drop the sail.  We got the boat to the bank where we could get out and push it down the waterway in about thigh deep water.  However, we could only push it so far before we came to another creek mouth that was too deep to walk across.  We were too cold to swim it across and the wind wouldn’t allow us to drift across so we beached the boat on the West side of the waterway.  We had no other option but to hunker down and wait for help.

We were wet and cold and the fog was relentless.  It was after midnight at this point and we could see the lights coming from the warm houses on the Northern end of Isle of Palms; it was a miserable feeling.  We didn’t have mobile phones back then and the handheld radio had a limited range, not to mention that it was such a nasty night that nobody in their right mind would be out on the water in a boat nearby.  We draped the tarp across the bow and crawled up under it to keep the fog off of our already wet and cold bodies; we hadn’t started to warm each other up by hugging or bundling together, but we were very conscious of the fact that at some point we might have to.  We laid there on our backs looking up at the blue tarp that was inches from our faces; we focused on how much the tarp was helping us to not get any wetter, but that was about as positive as we could get.

After about an eternity we heard our names being called out of the darkness; or we thought we heard our names then thought we were just going a little crazy.  Then it happened again and again.  It was a miracle.  Three of our friends had put their boat in the water at midnight to come searching for us; my wife was the catalyst for this rescue mission.  They found us some time after midnight and towed us back to the marina.  Needless to say, I will not be exploring any new creeks or clam beds when the tide is dropping with the sun; you can get into trouble that way.

So Stephen and I towed the boat to the landing and we were getting ready to put in when we ran into the other clammers; their boats were already in the water and they were eager to get out there.  King Saul, Sarge, and Mary have been clamming forever, basically.  When I first started working on the creek the owner of the fish-house told me that there was a guy in Awendaw that always got 4 bags a day; he was twice my age and could dig 4 times as much as me at that time…so King Saul became a sort of motivator for me.  When I would have a bag or two and the tide was rising, running me off the bank, I would think how King Saul was going to beat me if I didn’t hustle.  This thought often pushed me to get more than four bags when earlier in the day it felt like I would never even get more than two.  Sarge and Mary are the same way; they would consistently get a minimum of four bags, which is 1000 clams (250 clams per bag).

So, at the landing, King Saul and Sarge were shouting to us, “Where are the clams today?” and Stephen yelled back, “We’ll just follow you, wherever you go!”  King Saul and Sarge laughed and said, “We’re following you, so you can show us your best spots.”  Which is kind of a joke because they know all the best spots so we pulled out the charts and King Saul and Sarge came over to the boat to look at them.  King Saul put his finger on the chart pointing to a creek that cuts over to the Bull’s Bay and said “Go down this creek and take a left when you hit the bay.  There’s clams all up and down this bank.”  This information was as good as gold to me, and I would follow them every day because they know; King Saul, Sarge, and Mary, they know where the clams are.  So it was decided and we started to back the boat down the ramp.

Stephen ‘threw me in’ which basically means that I was in the boat, he was backing the truck down, and the boat was not hooked to the trailer so when he slammed on the brakes the boat would go skidding off the trailer into the water.  This method takes a few things for granted, for one, the engine will start, and for another, the plugs are all in.  So the boat floated off the trailer and the engine started and the plugs were in so Stephen pulled the truck up and parked it.  When he came back to the ramp to get in and go I put the engine in reverse and kind of leaned backwards in anticipation of moving in that direction; however, the boat actually went forwards and rammed into the concrete landing.  Pretty funny.  So, I put it in neutral, but the propeller was still spinning indicating that the engine was still in gear.  What?  I looked down at the shifter cable and realized that it had broken and the engine was stuck in forward gear.  Thunder started rumbling in the distance.  There was no way we could go like this.

King Saul, Sarge, and Mary waited no longer, and they sped off down the creek to dig their clams.  Stephen backed the truck down again and we loaded the boat up and took it back to the yard to start fixing the cable.  Thirty dollars and four hours later and I’ve got a new shifter cable; now all I have to do is put the cable back on and the throttle control back together and we’re good to go.  By the way, I’m sure they got their four bags; I actually heard that one of the others, Lamar,  got eight bags…Opening Day!

Dredging Oysters from Jeff Spahr on Vimeo.

Filling up the barge from Jeff Spahr on Vimeo.

Taking the barge in tow from Jeff Spahr on Vimeo.

“Planting” the oysters and oyster shell from Jeff Spahr on Vimeo.

Once we pick them, we take them to be processed at the fish house where we wash them extra clean and bag them in bushel bags; at that point each bushel receives South Carolina DHEC approval and a sales tag and is ready to be delivered that day.

We harvest our oysters when they are exposed on the banks during low tide; therefore, our schedule depends on the tides.  When the tides are low in the morning then we can often harvest your oysters and deliver them the same day.  Otherwise, we will most often harvest them the day before your oyster roast.  Wholesale and retail establishments can keep oysters in their coolers for just over 2 weeks; when you order from us they will be as fresh as the tides and time allow. 

Feel free to give us a call with questions at 843-568-6380.