Murfreesboro Post
MURFREESBORO WEATHER

For fishermen, the worm keeps turning




Worm fishing is still popular among anglers. SUBMITTED

Trout fishermen, with their split-bamboo fly rods and match-the-hatch flies, turn up their noses at us worm-dunkers.

Ditto for bass anglers in their rip-roaring, rooster-tailing boats loaded with enough tackle to stock an aisle at Bass Pro Shops.

Let ‘em snicker.

I like worm fishing.

I caught my first fish on a worm under a float, and a half-century later there’s still something magical about seeing a bobber bob and go under.
Sir Izaak Walton, the original outdoor writer, was a worm-fisherman. In the 1600s he wrote about “the dangling angle-worm.”

As kids we used worms for fish bait for a simple reason: they were free for the digging. Just take a hoe out to grandma’s garden and fill up a JFG coffee can with red wigglers.

Nowadays not many fishermen have grandmas with gardens, or know how to operate a hoe, so they buy their worms at bait shops.

Supplying worms for fish bait is big business. They are grown on “worm ranches.” (I’ve always wondered what it was like at branding time.) The worms are collected, packaged and distributed to retailers throughout the country.

They don’t come cheap. Big, fat nightcrawlers cost $5 for a box of 12.
(Public service message: never leave a box of nightcrawlers in the trunk of your car for several days in mid-August.)

In addition to redworms, we also fished with Catalpa worms. The green, juicy worms feasted on Catalpa leaves in the summertime and were easy to pluck. They were especially effective for catfish, but impaling one was not for the squeamish.

Worms have always been popular fish bait for a simple reason: they catch fish.

With that in mind, in 1949, Akron, Ohio fisherman Nick Crème produced the first artificial worm. It was made from a secret rubber compound with the size, color and texture of the real thing.

The Crème Worm was a bass-busting hit, and remains popular today – along with hundreds of copy-cat spinoffs. I suspect over the years more bass have been caught on artificial worms and their spinoffs than on all other lures combined.

I bought a Crème Worm as a kid and caught so many bass on it that the water level dropped in several local farm ponds.

Although the worm looked and felt natural, it came on a snelled hook with red beads and a tiny metal propeller. I was a tad skeptical – the worms in grandma’s garden didn’t have beads and propellers – but I quickly became a believer when big bass gobbled it up.

I fished with it until it was chewed to shreds. I went to get a replacement worm at the Western Auto, but they were sold out. Crème Worms were so popular they flew off the shelves.

While waiting for my new rubber worm, I kept hauling in catfish on Catalpas, and big bluegills on redworms, and have been ever since.
Real or artificial, worms catch fish – just as Sir Izaak said.