anyone keep their own worms?

[phil]

Im always looking for my next project and im a cheap bastid. I foresee the day hopefully soon when my son is old enough to tag along on fishing trips. Do any of you keep your own worm beds? Seems like a pretty easy project, takes up little to no space in my backyard and I can stick it by my shed away from my house along a fence completely hidden out of view.

[kmaty]

My old man built one when we were kids had it filled with worm buzz he used wood to make a 4x4 box and a custom fit lid that was stashed away in the cellar corner well one day somebody wither left the lid off or they found their way out and mom said that was the end of that(she still tothis day finds all the stuff you don't want her to see b4 you can cover it up...idk how she does it) out to the garage they went witch is fairly hard to maintain in summer with the heat drying it up and Warmer temps and worms just make a stinky mess

[Denlon]

Originally Posted by phil

Im always looking for my next project and im a cheap bastid. I foresee the day hopefully soon when my son is old enough to tag along on fishing trips. Do any of you keep your own worm beds? Seems like a pretty easy project, takes up little to no space in my backyard and I can stick it by my shed away from my house along a fence completely hidden out of view.

As a kid, my Dad and I used take flashlights and go worm hunting after dark on our front lawn after a good rain storm.

The night crawlers were about half way out of their holes and were easy to see (without scaring them) if you used a piece of RED cellophane over the flashlight light beam. Apparently worms can't see red light. You could grab them at the point where they came out of the ground and then GENTLY pull them out. If you pulled too hard or fast, you would break them. We could literally get hundreds of them if you wanted to. We usually took about a 100 or so.

(You can do this on a lawn or field which hasn't been treated with insect spray or weed killers. There wont be many worms if the ground has been treated.)

Keeping them was no problem if you had a cool garage or shed in the summer, and a cool (not hot) place where they wouldn't freeze in the winter.

Simply get a corrugated cardboard box about 2 feet square, and a foot high. Put down layers of water-soaked newspaper inside. Use the regular black & white print only. (For some reason the worms react badly to the shiny colored pages.) Alternate the pages with about a dozen worms on each layer. Make sure you keep the newsprint wet, but not under water. Feed the worms about every two weeks with coffee grounds lightly sprinkled between the layers. Change the paper and re-layer the worms every month or so if the pages start to get slimey or the box starts to smell. When done correctly, there should be no odor coming from thr box.

When you go fishing, simply lift up a layer or two and take as many as you need.

Two things to watch out for are mice and ants.
Either of these will decimate the worm box in a few days if you don't detect that they have found it.

Good luck,
Denny

[DoubleG]

Back in the day I built one in the ground in a shady part of my yard. I built a box with a screen bottom and a hinged top. Dug a hole that the box would fit in and filled it up with dirt. I kept wet newspaper on top and fed them coffee grinds.

[Eskimo]

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I live in an condo with a fascist condo owners' association, so I can't keep a real worm farm. But at my parents' house, I have a compost pile of leaves and grass clippings. If it's not too dry out, I can always collect earthworms from that pile.

I used to have the compost piled up so high that the compost would generate enough heat to produce worms through the winter, even if there was snow on top. The neighbors complained about the unsightly mountain of grass and leaves and I had to flatten it out.

Technology never produced anything more effective than the lowly earthworm as a panfish bait.




.

[420*NightCrawler]

Whenever I'm planning on fishing with worms, I'll just water the lawn for a hour or two before dusk. When it gets dark, I'll head out with a flashlight and start catching.

[briansnat]

I haven't kept worms in years, but much like Denlon, when I was a kid I would go to the park on a damp night and catch crawlers. We could catch hundreds if we wanted, but usually stopped at a few dozen.

For a time my dad kept worms in the garage. He used an old cooler with airholes drilled in the lid and torn strips of wet newsprint for worm bedding.

We also had a leaf compost pile behind the garage that was a ready source for the small, reddish garden worms.

I don't fish much with worms anymore. Once in a while in a stream for trout, but otherwise I catch too many ''undesirables'' with them. Because I use them so rarely I just buy them when I need them.