Columbus Day Fishing – How to Find Worms

I had Columbus Day off from work and the boys wanted to go fishing. So I asked them where they’d like to go and off we headed to our local creek. It was a warm sunny day and the tide was high so I figured on a good day for fishing. I always use lures when fishing – I guess because I like the challenge associated with them as opposed to putting bait on a hook and waiting for a fish to come eat.

So on our way to go fresh water fishing, I asked my older son to get some worms for his brother and him. It turns out that we hadn’t had much rain lately and the worms were hard to find. Where he would normally find lots of worms (lifting old logs and looking under leaves) he found only 2 little scrawny worms. Not good for fishing bait! So he and my younger son tried their hands at lure fishing.

We had some hits, but no catches. Frustration for my 5 yeqr old was very high!  😉  So I asked my older son again to try and find some worms – to which he replied, “Dad, there aren’t any worms around here.” So I had to go get them myself!  He taunted me with “You’re wasting your time Dad.”  But within 3 minutes I had a container full of very large worms!  Of course my older son wanted to know how I did it. After telling him that old age usually means more wisdom ;-), I explained how to find worms when they weren’t in the obvious places.

Want to know what I did? OK – here goes. When I was younger, much younger, I remember from some of the different magazines I used to read that a company sold 2 electric prods that you stuck into the ground and the low current between the prods caused the earth worms to come out of the ground. My friend had bought one of these contraptions and swore by it. So I figured that a little elbow grease could do the same thing. Just poke a larger stick in the ground a few times and shake it. The vibrations cause the worms to come right out of the ground. It works very well!  Just ask my sons! Of course you wouldn’t try this in sand where there are obviously no worms around, but do this in the places where worms would normally be found. You’ll be pleasantly pleased with the results.

Here’s a picture of the first fish my older son caught after they started using the worms we found.

Oh … and the rest of the trip was very successful. We caught some largemouth bass, sunnies, as well as some roaches. Overall a fun afternoon for all.

Catch you later.

-Mark