Worms – it’s what’s for dinner. If you’re a walleye, that is. Ever since the invention of cane poles, worms have been considered one of the go-to baits for a shore angler. They are portable, easy to obtain, and fish love them. Most of us likely have early childhood memories of going fishing with our Zebco reel, the one that always seemed to get tangled up. A hook, a worm, a couple of split shots, and a round red and white bobber were all that were needed for a day’s adventure at the local pond.
Back in my youth (and that’s a long way back), the nightcrawler was the king of bait. We didn’t buy them, though; we caught them. After planning a fishing trip for the next day, we would wait for darkness to descend. As the streetlights came on, my brothers and I knew it was time to go worm catching! Into the backyard we would go, flashlights in hand. Because, like vampires, nightcrawlers only came out at night. For some reason, I never asked my dad why that was so; I just figured that’s what they did.
Our backyard had a nice-sized garden and several pine trees, and lots of nightcrawlers. There was a trick to catching crawlers that only boys could appreciate. Walking slowly along, guided by our flashlights, we would come upon a big, plump crawler, poking out of its hole, stretched out in the dirt and grass. The next steps at this point were critical. Nightcrawlers don’t like light, so it was vital to move the flashlight beam away from the crawler but still shining enough to be able to see him/her (worms are asexual, a fact we did learn with keen interest). The trick was to hold the flashlight with one hand and slowly reach down with the other to grab said crawler.
Most importantly, you had to grab the crawler at the point where he was coming out of his hole because the instant your fingers touched that crawler, he was crawling back down. As we got good at catching crawlers, it was a matter of gently pulling the frantic worm away from Mother Earth and into our waiting bucket. Now, sometimes the worm would win, and sometimes we would come away with half a crawler, which I guess was a draw, but I never did catch any half-broken worms. We did, however, come across two crawlers in a romantic embrace. If you got both, that was bragging rights for best crawler catcher.
At the ripe age of 67, I have no interest in staying up after dark to catch nightcrawlers that I can easily buy. My sleep time is well worth the $3.50 for a dozen crawlers at the local bait shop. That said, I hate wasting bait. If I come home with nightcrawlers left, I put them in the fridge for another day. Sometimes they last, sometimes they don’t.
Last fall, I started a new hobby, which solved the dying crawler dilemma. Worm composting! Yes, you can have your bait and save it too.
Now I want to say here and now that I did not stumble on this new adventure for any “green” purposes. That said, I am happy to see that a byproduct of worm composting is some highly nutritious soil/fluids for my garden.
More importantly, I can bring home my unused nightcrawlers and add them to my bin of little friends. Now I always have “worms to go” if I want to go after some walleyes (or catfish). No more wasted nightcrawlers, and bait is always available.
Worm composting is quite easy, and there is a wealth of information on the web and YouTube. You can use very simple setups or spend a lot of money on them. I decided to start with a four-tray system and 100 European Red Wigglers, “starter worms”. These worms are not the larger nightcrawlers anglers are familiar with. They are smaller, perfect for panfish. They are also eating machines, turning fruit and vegetable scraps into nutrient-rich compost and “worm juice,” which will go into my garden this spring. As a bonus, these worms will rapidly reproduce to the capacity of your system, but no more. So, in addition to worm compost for the garden, I will also have excess worms that I can add to my garden to further increase my vegetable yields.
“What about those nightcrawlers?” you ask. To be specific, what you are buying for bait are Canadian Nightcrawlers. With the rich environment the Red Wiggler worms produce, the nightcrawlers I come back with after a fishing trip have a new home to live in until the next time they join me for a trip on the water. The two types of worms do fine together, and my nightcrawlers stay healthy and get even bigger and plumper than when I bought them. Unfortunately, Canadian nightcrawlers are not fast reproducers, and I do end up buying more crawlers, but I no longer toss my remaining bait in the water at the end of a fishing day. Instead, they return home with me to fish another day.
If this sounds like something you’d like to try, there is a wealth of information online and on YouTube that will tell you everything you need to get started. Depending on how fancy you want to proceed, you can go from very inexpensive DIY projects to spending a couple of hundred dollars for everything. Amazon has all types of composting/worm bins for sale. An excellent resource I found to purchase worms and learn more about this fun hobby is Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm.
Raising worms is fun! It’s educational! And it might just get you “hooked” as it did me.
