Manitou Garden Composting

Raising worms for fishing!

Most fishermen have a bias for the large earthworms called the night crawler.  When raising worms for fishing, even for commercial growers night crawlers are very difficult to raise because they burrow deep in the ground.  A little known fact is that red wigglers will stay alive for several days in water and continue to wiggle on the hook, whereas night crawlers die almost immediately!

Buy our Worm Bin and raise your own bait!  Red wigglers are usually 2 1/2 to 3 inches long and make great fish bait. You can even fatten them up by feeding them chicken mash or cornmeal!  Ask for chicken mash at your local feed store.  Sometimes the only mash available consists of little chunks of corn.  You can run this through a blender to break it into finer pieces.  Add a handful of moist mash (or cornmeal) to the top of the working tray every day, or mix a handful with the food waste when you feed your worms.  It will take several days to fatten your worms and you should add mash with every feeding.  For fatter worms, just follow the ideal worm fattener recipe below:

The Ideal Worm Fattener Recipe

• 5 parts chicken layer mash
• 2 parts wheat or rice bran
• 1 part agricultural lime
• 1 part wheat flour
• 1 part powder milk

Don't worry about running out of worms because you use them for bait, these little red wigglers reproduce like crazy if kept in the proper conditions!