Oh Canada!
There must be something in the water here. Monster-sized night crawlers rise to the surface and stretch out across the field during summer rains. Living near the flood plains next to Lake Alma doesn’t hurt. In the early mornings, we wear red LED hat clip lights and harvest them from their worm beds.
Here are 5 great tips for catching your own dew worms:
1. Wear a blue or red LED hat light or use a comfortable flashlight with colored filters. A good light should have a solid beam, not a wide beam with a bright center. Lights that use a more focused center beam tend to shine too brightly and the night crawlers will zip back down into their burrows.
2. Hunt on your hands and knees. You can miss a lot of night crawlers if you’re limited to scanning over the ground from a standing position, plus it’s harder on your eyes and back.
3. Use knee pads and elbow pads for comfort. Picking worms in a healthy eco-friendly way requires patience. Use knee pads and elbow pads if necessary so that you can hunt comfortably. A sling-style drawstring bag will also help keep you hands free.
4. Don’t pinch or break the worms. The worm uses bristles on its body to wedge inside the burrow. The body should pull out with ease until the worm reacts and contracts against your effort. Don’t keep pulling. Simply hold the night crawler in place and it will release after a few seconds.
5. Dump your worms into a container and refrigerate. They will be in a temporary state of shock so wait about 2 days for them to acclimate to their new environment. Bedding for night crawlers should be moist but not soaked. They will eat damp newspaper, just place it on top of the bedding.
Do not use chemical irritants or an electrical current to drive them out of the ground. This will deteriorate the health of the worm, shock them more severely, and possibly harm your soil. Capture the big night crawlers and leave the adolescent and baby worms to mature and reproduce in their natural environment.
Technorati Tags: crazy worms, monster, jumbo, Canadian, night crawler, nightcrawler, worm, picking, hunting, fishing, bait, herp food, soil, Northern, dew, green, eco-friendly, environment
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May 13th, 2008 at 2:19 am
May many visitors come to your bait shop day in and day out. Not a real fan of worms but you certainly have some very healthy ones.
QuoteMay 16th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Thanks a lot Linda. Although worms are great for composting organic kitchen wastes, all of our bait-sized worms are fed a special blend of food, supplements, and sterile manure. It keeps them plumped, happy, and healthy.
You should see how worms are being used in India to literally clean the toxins out of the soil and improve water supplies.
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