Now I love my worms but I also love to fish, so the question of being able to use my composting worms for fishings was going to come up sooner or later…..
Composting worms are great for fishing and the european nightcrawler is the best because once this worm is on the hook it will wriggle and squirm for a good 30 minutes after being submerged into water. This makes it attractive to fish, as well as being a reasonable sized worm for the fish to eat.
So as I just mentioned I am also a keen fisherman, and using worms for bait is nothing new to me. Having a stock of fishing worms is a great idea if you are running a wormery already, because it is easy to create an additional supply of worms from existing stock. If you haven’t got a worm farm but were thinking of having one just for fishing worm stock, then you may as well put in alittle extra effort to benefit from a decent supply of vermicompost to use at home in your garden, as it wont take much to setup. In this post i’ll talk about that as well as some other things like;
- how to fatten up your worms for fishing
- my all time top 3 worm loving fish
- selling fishing worms as a business
- other uses for excess worm stock
Raising your own compost worm for fishing
So probably the simplest way of doing this is to buy a ready made worm farm and set it up at home. On the other hand you may choose to build your own from scratch, but either way I wont go into much detail here because I have written about both of these before, so instead of rehashing the same post you can use the links below.
Whether you are going to buy a wormery kit or make your own, they will both work on the same principles and that is as follow;
- Setup / Build your wormery
- Supply initial bedding and starter feed
- Add initial worm stock
- Regularly add food waste from left overs and other kitchen waste like peelings, tea bags, fruit cores etc.
- The worms feed from this waste and as it passes through the worm it comes out as compost known as vermicompost, a very high quality fertiliser that is great to use on your garden plants.
- Worms will naturally breed and your stock will multiply
- Optional – split worm stock to start a 2nd wormery.
One of the things you need to decide is the type of worm(s) you are going to use. The main 2 types are european night crawlers, which in my opinion are the best for fishing, or tiger worms. Both have advantages.
The nightcrawler is the best composting worm for fishing but the reproduction rate is a lot slower than the tiger worm so your yield is going to be less. They generate an average of 1.5 cacoons per week and average 4 young a month. Compared to the tiger worm who have an average of 3 cacoons per week and upto about 40 young a month. They have alot more young per cacoon and as a result will give you around 10 x more worms than the nightcrawler. My personal preference is to have both in the same wormery as they are happy to co-exist.
When it comes to your fishing worm stock I recommend a second wormery, using the first as a base and using the stock to introduce worms into the second unit. I like doing it this way for several reasons.
- If something happens to one of the stocks you have the other as a back up and should have it rectified in good time.
- You can keep an better gauge of your worm numbers because you only use the worms from the second unit, so the base stock is un-affected. This is more so for the nightcrawlers becasue of the slower breeding rate.
Your breeding strategy is subjective as it will depend on how much you fish. For example if you fish infrequently then one wormery maybe enough for you. On the other hand if you are fishing all of the time the you may decide on more than 2 worm farms. Food waste output will also be another factor because it would pointless having say 5 setups but only ever enough waste to feed 2, theit would end up being cheaper to buy worms for fishing than having to buy extra feed.
How To Fatten Up Your Worms For Fishing
With your wormery setups established you will want to get the most out of your worms and this means fattening them up for the fish. You can control this by adapting their diet prior to your fishing trip, or if you fish regularly making it their normal diet.
The receipe I like to follow is one found on thespruce.com
- 1 part cornmeal
- 1 part wheat flour
- 1 part ground up oatmeal
According to the same site, the cornmeal is great for adding bulk to the worms quickly so you should start to see results in a short time after starting the feed up. This recipe can be used on both worms so no worries about mixing the worm types in the same wormery.
The nightcrawlers eat half their own body weight every day and the tiger worms will match their own weight in food each day. With this in mind you can do the maths based on your estimated worm stock as to how much feed to put in your wormery each day and how much you will replace with fattening receipe. Just make sure you dont over feed them by adding the fattening food as additional food because they wont eat extra and over feeding can be bad news.
Selling Fishing Worms For Profit
This is something I am yet to try but i’d imagine it can be quite easy to at least sell enough worms to cover your costs of your wormery setup quickly. Here in the UK you can buy worms on ebay in 30 gram packs for £6.50 each which works out at a massive £215 per kilo. Then upto 1 kilo packs at £41.75 per kilo. Even at the lower price per kilo it wont take long to earn a few quid back.
If I do explore selling worms for fishing then to start with I would tackle (excuse the punn) the people on my local fishing lake where I know quite a few of the other guys there. I’d imagine it would be easy to pick up a few regular customers. Selling on eBay is another great avenue for customers and maybe local pet shops because some reptiles have worms in their diet, like beared dragons for example.
My Favourite Fish Lovin For Worms
Live bait is arguably the best bait to catch a fish and pretty much any freshwater fish will eat one, although they don’t all prefer them so some are harder to catch than other.
My 3 person favourites , in no particlaur order are:
- Trout
- Cat fish
- Striped Bass
Using Up Excess Worm Stock
You can’t freeze fishing worms because they go mushy when defrosted, so if you have left over stock from your setup, or you know you aren’t going fishing then what can you do with them?
Worms in a wormery should only breed enough to fill the setup size you have, and after reaching full capacity they should self regulate their breeding to prevent over crowding. This is great if you aren’t fishing regularly because you wont need to worry about harvesting worms when you don’t need them. However if you want to harvest your worms and repurpose them then you do have a few options. Obviously you may well be selling them already and I think this is the best way to use them, but other uses include:
- using them as pet food for pets like lizards and frogs
- feeding the local ducks
- chickens love eating them
- starting another wormery