Catching worms

[mjbarnes12]

Worms of all sorts are expensive does anyone have any tips regarding:

 

How to catch worms

Where to look for them (i know soil and fields but is their anywhere specifically)

When is the best time to look for them

Why: is it worth the search or is it easier just to go down to the tackle shop (good old alans in worcester)

 

thank you please

[Guest Rabbit]

Hi there...

 

Best way to get worms is to wait for some rain...you wont have to wait long ha! ;Grab a torch, not too bright, and wait until night and CAREFULLY pick them off your lawn, if you dont have a lawn the local park will do. Take a bait bucket and a good excuse for the local cop. Grab the worm firmly before it bolts down its hole but dont pull, if you do the worm will break and will be useless to keep. When the worm relaxes just pull gently and its yours.

keep practising and you will be fine, many worms can be harvested this way.

'

Or if you want red worms, find a compost heap and turn over gently, great bait for roach too.

 

Or you can dig and old flower bed etc, normally a very good source.

 

Some say washing up liquid soaked on grass will bring some up but never tried it.

 

Or build a wormery.

 

Best of luck!!

[StuGlynn]

Look under flags, carpets etc or any other stuff on the ground,

 

Get a compost bin and throw a few worms in it they will change sex and breed.

 

Or, if you have a spare corner in the garden get a bail of straw from a local farm and let it start to rot in a corner. I used to do this and the worms seem to love it got loads!

[BoldBear]

You are in luck If you know of a field where a farmer has been stacking his horse manure because when it has started to rot down it will hold thousands of small lively Red worms.

 

If I fish one of my clubs monthly matches I normally go for a quick walk and get more than enough redworms to last a 5 hour match in just a few minutes, and the Tench and Bream love them.

 

BB

Edited January 15, 2008 by BoldBear

[Jolanta Zofia Nowak]

I back up the reply about compost heaps. They produce lots of small, red worms as well as compost! Two birds with one stone.

[Kappa]

Best way to get worms is to wait for some rain...you wont have to wait long ha! ;Grab a torch, not too bright, and wait until night and CAREFULLY pick them off your lawn, if you dont have a lawn the local park will do. Take a bait bucket and a good excuse for the local cop. Grab the worm firmly before it bolts down its hole but dont pull, if you do the worm will break and will be useless to keep. When the worm relaxes just pull gently and its yours.

keep practising and you will be fine, many worms can be harvested this way.

 

I'd agree, you can get lots of large lobs pretty quickly this way! I have a slightly different method though. I creep up on them and then pin them to the ground with all four fingers of one hand and then use my other hand to find the end of the worm in the hole and gently tease it out. This way you don't need to actually grab hold of them, and I think it damages them less and you miss less.

 

Rich

[Jeff S]

I'd agree, you can get lots of large lobs pretty quickly this way! I have a slightly different method though. I creep up on them and then pin them to the ground with all four fingers of one hand and then use my other hand to find the end of the worm in the hole and gently tease it out. This way you don't need to actually grab hold of them, and I think it damages them less and you miss less.

 

Rich

 

As a 12 year old this was exactly what we would do. All the excess nightcrawlers that we couldn't use fishing we would sell to the tackle shop for something like $5 for a gallon. Wet work it was too. Mind you, I didn't make a whole lot of money.

[Bluey]

A few years ago I used to take both my lads along with the dog out for a walk after dark in the evenings. A bait box was also taken and on nights when it was still drizzling with, or had stopped, raining we used to check out the pathway on the main road, there are two entrances to our estate, which form a semi loop road and very often as we'd walk down the road we would come across worms of all sorts and sizes, crossing form one side of the path to the other, a quick snatch and in the baitbox it would go.

 

We would keep this up for about an hour or so and at the end of it would have sufficient worms to last three of us for at least a couple of trips out fishing. As we went down the road we would also check out where the road signs and lamp posts went into the ground and frequently there would be a big lobby laying there, and I would show the lads how to fetch it out of the ground. We would get quite a few big ones that way.

 

The only down side to it was you would get some strange looks from people passing you in cars and you would get second looks from passing police patrol vehicles. In fact we were stopped one night by a couple of nosy coppers who wanted to know what we were doing.

[dapper64]

I have to agree with horse manure theres loads of the red worms in it,also if you dig where the little mud twirls are in the garden there's usualy a big lob worm underneath it.