collecting worms

[chummer]

Anyone care to share thier methods for collecting earthworms? (besides buying them). I've noticed quite a few on parking lots after the rain. I've heard of shocking the ground and pouring soapy water onto the yard to bring them up. Any trophy worm hunters out there?

[Dan Christopher]

I just put a big piece of plywood in the garden in the winter to keep the soil dry, makes the worms group up there.

[ 12-13-2002, 02:00 PM: Message edited by: MADWIZERD ]

[Fast Water]

As a kid, I recall my Grandmother completly soaking the ground in the backyard for a couple of hours. Then she would stick some kind of rod in the ground and later at night we go worm hunting with flashlight.

It always seemed to work.

:smile:

[NEUTRON]

I discovered this the other day when cleaning the cooler my kid & I salvaged from the upper clack. Try a little bleach in a few gallons of water, the crawlers came from every where when we dumped it out.

[Fishalot]

Most soap products will make worms come up because it cuts off the air so up they come. Soap or bleech need to be washed off the worms or the sent will still be on them and it will kill them.

Fishalot

[Lipripper]

Worms forced to the surface with bleach won't last very long(don't think the fish like bleach either). Try an electrical cord with only one live wire,just one of the two prongs(does that make sence?). Attach the wire to a series of rods and stick them in the ground. In a few minutes you will have the crawlers begging to be picked up. Use this mehod years ago when I was a poor student and sold them to a bait distributor up in Lyons so I could have gas and ? to go fishing on the Santiam..

[Corkie Monster]

I just look on the back patio at night after a good rain :grin:

[fishingfirst]

Chummer,

You can get nightcrawlers without the shocking rod or any other kind of coaxing agent. Just find yards that are well drained, without really thick grass. Go out about an hour after dark with your flashlight, scan the yard with the light, you will see the reflection from the slime on the worm, slowly work your way over to it, making sure to not stomp too loudly, slowly set your flashlight down so it is putting a little light on the worm (just enough so that you can see it) then BLAST IT WITH YOUR SHOTGUN! :shocked: :shocked: Just kidding, wanted to see if anybody was paying attention. All you have to do is pinch the worm between your finger and the ground( where it is coming out of the ground), you have to be pretty quick to do this, then just sloowwlly pull them out of the ground, if you pull too fast they will break, a slow steady pressure will get them out. You should be able to get 3-4 dozen in a good area within about an hour. If your area is not that good, keep searching, just make sure you warn your neighbors first!

When I was a teenager, we used to sell nightcrawlers to the local bait store, our best night was 128 dozen in about four hours, with three of us gathering worms!!

Good luck!
Scott

[GutshotApe]

When I was a kid we lived on the road fishermen took if headed for the Columbia beach below town and I had a nightcrawler business for a while - sold 12 big fat nightcrawlers for 20 cents. In 1959 that was real money for a kid :dance: .

In summer, my brother & I would mow the lawn (ours, the neighbors) then turn on the sprinklers for several hours ending at dusk. Turn off all outside lights. After dark we'd use flashlights and tip toe around picking up worms. It was a form of hunting because they're quick and would retreat back into their hole if they detected you about to grab 'em. You couldn't put the flashlight beam directly on them or they'd disappear back underground.

We also hit the city parks on nights after the sprinklers had been on and got a lot of worms there. For a while we supplied worms sold at stores in the Gearhart/Tillamook bay area - shipped by Greyhound bus.

[ultralight]

chummer,

What are you planning to do with the worms? Besides using them for sandwich condiments, of course.

Also, using red lens filter on flashlights reduces the worm spooking.

[steelymann]

My wife, being the environmentally friendly person she is, made a bin where she puts her compost. She put about 30 nightcrawlers from our yard in there and now I have hundreds in all sizes! Of course she doesn't know that I'm tilling her bin for bait but its awesome and NO work! Just put newspaper and your organic waste in there for great worms. I've even dumped some shrimp scent in there and the fish LOVE it!

~steelymann~ :dance: :dance:

[DRUNK COWBOY]

The best place, and the only place I will look for worms is at a golf club. Go to the fairways after they have watered them. Make sure it is at least 2 hours after dark. I would suggest painting the glass on your flash light with a red marker, so the worms will not be spooked.

Bring a 5 gallon bucket and a couple of beers :cheers:

[Straydog]

During a brief 'between jobs' situation in my younger days, I was the proud Foreman (note the capital F, please :grin: ) of a nightcrawler picking crew for a bait distributor in the Rogue Valley between Medford and Shady Cove. graemlins/1zhelp.gif

My resume is fairly diverse anyway, I started my formal business carreer as The Acey Bird.

Football fields, parks, soccer fields and such are great pickings.

Fishingfirst has done a stellar job of capturing the prefered 'stalk and stike' method of collection.

When I was a kid it was always good pickins after flood irrigating. In between times we had two electrical prods that would bring them up....

The best worms are not shocked or drugged.

Great Steelhead or 'anything' bait!

:cheers:

[ 12-13-2002, 05:14 PM: Message edited by: Straydog ]

[crabbait]

Price went up to 35 cents in the sixties! I used to pick 'em, too. Best place is a good apple orchard or other area with leaves and bare ground. Worms feed on the leaves and drag them over to their holes. Wet ground works best.

Use a head-light and wrap it with a piece of red plastic or a bread wrapper off a loaf of brown bread or the worms will sense the light and withdraw into their holes. Grab them right next to the ground and keep steady pressure on until they try to get a better grip, then they come out easily.

Shocking or posioning with bleach/detergent just makes for dead worms. Put them in a container that they can breath through and store them in any cool place in moss and leaves or shredded news paper. Feed them baby chick scratch and they will grow like you won't believe.

[ampersat]

i already do the compost thing. with three mature trees and a quarter acre yard, i've got all the composting material i can't fit into a yard debris bin. i get worms so big you'd need a 4/0 hook just to bait up with 'em. why stalk 'em in the wild when a little bit of the right bait will bring them right to your back door?

[Point-of-Sale Clerk]

Growing up my job in the spring was picking worms on our 2 acre front yard. We did not have a lot of money growing up so everyone picked into the wee hours of the morning. We would sell them by the thousand to my uncle’s tackle shop in Coos Bay. To get them down there from the north valley we would send them on the Greyhound bus. You should have seen the look on the bus driver’s and passenger’s faces when they learned there was 2 or 3 thousand live night crawlers in the big box sitting next to there luggage…
:grin: then BLAST IT WITH YOUR SHOTGUN! (Oops sorry fishingfirst)
:laugh:

[Keta]

:mad: Don't put chlorine on the ground! :mad:

[ 12-13-2002, 09:59 PM: Message edited by: Keta ]

[HeavyMetal BankFisherman]

I do not recommend this as I will never do it again. But I remember when I was a teenager and we gathered worms to go trout fishing, wee would soak the groung with water and then use an electic shocker to bring the worms to the top. We made our own shockers using metal rods placed in the ground about six feet apart and an extension cord cut off and hooked to the metal rods. Sometimes if your feet got wet you could feel a tingle. ZAP!

As I said I would not do this now. Plus the worms did not have much action. The electric shock seems to injure the worms. Makes them mushy with no bounce.

[Dipnet]

The old flashlight on the freshly watered lawn or garden always works for me! :wink: And if it rains really, really hard, just pick them up off the street or driveway!!! :grin: :grin:

Dipnet