Mussels taste wonderful when fried, steamed, served in butter or incorporated into a seafood recipe. More plentiful than clams in many waters, they are harvested similarly. Here are some tips on harvest mussels and serve them at your next seafood dinner.
Instructions
1. Pick them off the rocks. Bring a bucket, wait for low tide when the waters recede and literally pick them off the rocks. Check with your local game warden for size regulations, although mussels are not as regulated as clams since they have not been as overfished.
2. Scrape the ocean floor with mussel forks. These look like long rakes, and they expose the mussels after you rake the sand. Use these in shallow water of up to 4 feet.
3. Try shell tongs to harvest mussels. Shell tongs are a long-handled tool shaped like two rakes. Connected in the middle, you squeeze them together as you would a pair of scissors. These are great to use in several feet of water while fishing for seafood from a small boat.
4. Use your "crowsfeet," which is another tool used to harvest clams or mussels. Several hardened hooks are fastened at the end of a long rod. Crowsfeet are for use in fairly deep water. You drop the crowsfeet into the water (while still attached to a rope) and let the "hook" rest on the ocean floor. The mussels, thinking the hooks are food, open their shells and clasp onto the hooks. Once clasped onto the hooks, the mussels are unable to reopen their shells and release themselves.
Tags: harvest mussels, ocean floor, onto hooks, their shells, them rocks
