Pick Your Own Red Wigglers

[fishwalton]

I would be interested also about solving the mite problem. I hardly ever use redworms but buy "wigglers" by the thousand and keep them in a styrofoam box about 2 ft by 2 ft. After a few weeks I start having mite problems. This could be from feeding or watering too much or too little. Just don't know what causes the problem.

[cricket george]

Its not a problem, its just part of the ecosystem that develops in the worm box

[shipahoy41]

You are going to have the most clean worm bin in the world,lol.Heck,you'll be able to put a worm on the hook and then grab a split shot and crush it down with your teeth without tasting them,Ha.

Blame "G" because he got me started raising the little redworms. Now I even have a farm just for my boat. Always nice to be able to feed the fish "Hallmark" redworms. That is when you care enough to feed them the very best. Lol

[RetiredRR]

Interesting thread. Lots of info here and I would like to contribute since I had a commercial business at one time in my past. We sold worms to JAPAN for
the protein and they used the Hybred Red Wigglers in their garbage dumps to reduce space. Yep, they ate the worms because they are full of protein.
Nope, I never tried one. They do have two hearts and yep, you can break one in half and it will heal and continue to grow. Their eggs have between 7 and
21 babies in them and the eggs look like okra seeds. We fed our beds (4' X 16') wet dairy manure. A strip down the middle and all the worms came to the
top to feed. If you live away from the sounds of the city, you can actually hear them feed. Our bedding material was mulched corrugated cardboard mixed
with dried horse manure, which was free if you cleaned the stalls at the stables. We mixed very little peat moss with our bedding. We used 4' X 8' sheets
of plywood to cover our beds and we did string lights down the middle of our beds so they wouldn't escape during the night. We purchased a large harvester
from a commercial company to harvest our worms and separated them according to size. Our castings were sold to landscaping companies. I sold worms to
several baitshops around Fort Worth and finally got several guys started to take over that part of the business. It was a good business for about 10 years
but I had to give it up (sold out) due to my real job on the railroad. Seniority is great when you can work at home all the time, but if you don't have it, you
got to go on down the road to keep a job sometimes. I got bumped and had to go on down the road.........LOL If I can be of any assistance, just holler.

[Gigem13]

We do the very same thing. We use an old 3'x2' mortar mixing tub and just use kitchen scraps to feed them. There are also grubs that the chickens didn't get too in the tub as well. The bass love them suckers. Keeps $$$$ in our pocket and teaches the kiddos a great lesson.

[suwanneered]

HI Guys: Well I am new to this forum and have already learned several tips!Thanks
I have done a lot of salt water fishing but no fresh water fishing for many years I am to old to go to sea any more so I am taking up Crappie and Bream fishing at 77 years old.I just finished restoring a nice little Venture Bass Boat with a 70 Evinrude on it and haven't had ity in the water as yet.Weather is bad so I have been working on some fresh water gear as I have alot of salt stuff but No fresh water gear so I am rebuilding that also.
One thing I though of is when I was younger we had a electric rod we would push into the ground and plug it up to a 110Volt outlet.Any of you ever do that?To the best of my recollections it was connected to a hot side if the current and no ground but would ground when the rod was incontact with the ground.The worms would come to the surface fast!
I am making one of the minnow traps right now waiting on the glue to dry and decided to post this message.
Thanks and this is a great forum I am enjoying it alot!! Bill

[CDavisLPN]

Another way of collecting worms in the spring when the walnuts/pecans/hickory nuts are green on the trees you can pull them down place them in a five gallon bucket and let them soak for several days until the water turns brown and then pore it in likely areas where you think the worms will be.... If there are any worms in the ground it will bring them to the top fast, as in like about 30 a minute.... If you don't want to wait several days you can crush the green parts of the shells and then add the water and slosh it around until you have the dark colored water.... We used to do this in the spring when we were younger.... I actually saw a video on youtube of something similar to this not long ago...... Like I said not sure why it works but it does.... I know that worms will come to the top after a rain so they don't drown but this brings them up a lot faster.... Oh yah almost forgot you have to wash the worms after you do this or they will die.... Just dunk them in water and then put them into whatever you want to store them in.... Cody

[no1son]

To make your boxes worm tight build a close fitting hinged top. Then line the edge with the thin foam from your local hardware store used to weather seal doors and windows. It will be adhesive on one side. When you close the top you want it to require a liitle bit of force to go the final way and then you install hook eyes to hold it tight. No worms will get out. IOW gasket your top.

To ventilate, back to the hardware store for those fine round copper faucet screens. Cut a hole and epoxy or silicone the screens in place, where you need them. You get ventilation, keep the worms in and most if not all of the bugs out.

For smaller quantities of bait, those covered styrofoam boxes with the tight fitting lids breath with needing any additional ventilation. Nothing gets into those except what you put in. They also seep water so be careful where you set them for any length of time, and they dry out, since they breath; so you have to watch the moisture levels.

I got to the point where I preferred the leaf worms to the red wigglers. More temperature tolerant and less fragile on the hook. Then I converted to plastics and don't use either one anymore.

There used to be a book around called "Lunkers love nightcrawlers" about using, keeping and conditioning the bigger, real Canadian nightcrawlers. The final touch they called conditioning works like a charm for them and no reason that something similar won't for the wigglers. But the most important thing to remember is to not let your worms overheat while you are fishing or their bait quality declines dramatically. But that is a whole other topic.

[Swampfoot]

I read the posts and said why not build one.I did out of a large cooler that the top hinges were broken.My wife and i love to shell cracker and bream fish, so this was a no brainer.Thank everyone for there input very useful.