Lobworms....How Do You Store Yours?

The subject of bait preparation and storage is always a hot topic of conversation amongst anglers, maggots, casters, bread, worms, pellets or whatever, we all have our own tried and trusted methods and secrets.

Lobworms are a favourite bait of mine and have caught me some great fish over the years, they are a superb big fish bait and one which rarely attracts the attention of small fish (with the exception of perch), they are an easy bait to use and relatively easy to obtain (except in my garden which seems to be devoid of them!). The big question is how does the angler store them in tip top condition?

Collecting worms is almost a sport in it's own right and something I may write about another time, suffice to say that it's good fun and I'd recommend it to anyone! When I had more time for such things than I have now I would spend hours collecting worms and when I had a sufficient amount I would fill a large rubble bag with soil to within four inches of the top, deposit the worms into it and lean it up against the back of our shed with the top open. This would provide me with enough worms to last me for a whole Winter's chub, roach and perch fishing on the river Leam. This simple arrangement served me well for some years and my supply of lobs never appeared to be any worse off for the experience.

Nowadays I use worms less frequently and therefore source them according to my needs, storage is now restricted to the confines of a bait box and my preference is to keep them in soil.
Now, here's the thing....My belief is that storage in soil allows the worms to continue ingesting soil and therefore continue to eat and as a consequence remain in the best condition possible. In fact by changing the soil I have kept worms for two or three weeks in a bait box.

Why then is there such a difference of opinion in the best medium for earthworm storage? Damp shredded newspaper is a popular one but other's swear by peat or even grass cuttings. When we were teenagers my mate Phil was told by his Dad (an angler of many years experience) to use moss for keeping his worms in, as a result Phil uses moss exclusively. And that brings me to this....

Last night I was reading a book called 'Perch: How to Catch Them' written in 1954 by Kenneth Mansfield and I came across the following passage....

"Scouring: Lobworms and Redworms can be improved by scouring for several days before use. They are placed in any suitable wooden or pottery container. The moss should be damp (but not sodden) and the containers should be inverted once a day so that the worms can work through the moss."

In 1613 John Dennys wrote this....

"The Pearch, the Tench, and Eele, doe rather bite at great red wormes, in Field or Garden bred, that have been scowred in mosse or Fennell rough, to rid their filth, and make them hard and tough."

It appears Mr Dennys, Mr Mansfield and Phil's Dad know something I don't!

Overkill !

Having touched on the subject of feeding in my previous post and how easy it is to keep the bites coming when you are catching fish, I must now report on how easy it is to get it wrong when bites are hard to come by.

Once again we were fishing at Stockton Reservoir this time occupying pegs at the far end of the lake in the mid 30's, bait was maggot and our target species was roach. As before Dad and I both fished wagglers at medium range and set off reasonably well catching some nice little roach up to about six ounces.

Within half an hour of starting the day turned noticeably cooler as the cold wind increased and our catch rate began to fall accordingly and that's where it all went wrong. Not being blessed with great patience, my in-built lets make something happen alarm sounded and rather than cut back on the feed, like a normal person would do, I upped my feed rate to a good pouchful of maggots each cast. Needless to say that was that, I limped to the end of the session picking up the occasional small roach.

Another valuable lesson learnt (until the next time !)