“We cannot solve a problem by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” - Albert Einstein
“I try to catch flies in cups and put them outside. After I wrote ‘The Underland Chronicles’…well, once you start naming cockroaches, you lose your edge.” - Suzanne Collins
It’s a well known and documented historical fact that just about every fish that swims in these parts crave a good and juicy, fat, wiggling worm. It’s a verifiable addiction.
A decent analogy might be, that the bad craving, is to the fish, the very same craving, as it is to a serious and voracious drug addiction, which any hooked drug addict goes through, as they try vainly to give up his, or her, worst habit.
Dangle any specie of a large, fat, red worm in any fish’s face, and no matter how hard it is for them to say, “Just say NO!”, it’s just too much for the poor fish’s badly addicted soul, to actually just say NO.
The adult white crappie is probably the one specie of fish around here that exhibits the most willpower at “Just say NO!” when presented with a big fat wiggler in front of his face. But, I can testify that many a stupid juvenile crappie has tasted the sharp hook, hidden by a healthy cluster of fresh worms.
My buddy Ross, who hails from the wilds of Cherokee Alabama, swears up and down that big crappie, two plus pounders, are much more addicted to fat, black cockroaches than any other crappie food source. He claims that if you serve a big crappie the choice between a fat old cockroach, preferably one with wings, or a slick little creek minnow, a slab crappie will instantly, savagely, inhale the cockroach first chance, every time. He claims big crappie are real junkies when it comes to a large cockroach.
I wandered into the deep end as I asked how he actually came by this amazing, but ludicrous addictive tendency, of the large white crappie. Cockroach addiction was new water for me in both taxonomy and piscatorial insect addictive tendencies. But, I was suddenly, inexplicably hooked.
Now Ross said he came by this secret phenomenon by learning to fish with a close relative who owned and operated an old time Alabama crossroads country store. It was a community meeting place, complete with a shady front porch. The sort of emporium that sported a spring loaded and squeaky screen door, emblazoned with a faded local white bread advertisement. The porch was festooned with a series of rusty metal milk crates, covered in tattered old boat cushions, and spit cans, for lazy customer lounging, with the purchase of a cold “dope” and a nickel pack of peanuts.
His grocer relative was the biggest crappie fishing legend in the county. The legend managed to maintain a big banana box in the back of the store, filled with old bananas and wilted lettuce. This cockroach trapline was where they captured their top secret, addictive slab crappie fish bait.
Armed with a hefty supply of overly large and well fed winged cockroaches, Ross and his mentor became two of the most famous crappie killers in all of north west Alabama. They also managed to never divulge their secret slab crappie bait to anybody. And, Ross says they donated tubs of fresh fish to hungry store patrons routinely, every spring, summer and fall.
This fishing with cockroaches thing always made my stomach retch. Especially when I asked if they actually ate the fish they killed with banana laden cockroaches. The answer was always, “Yes, well fried.”
For some strange reason, worms don’t affect my intestines the same way big black cockroaches do. I’m not exactly sure why it doesn’t, but it’s just not the same sort of thing somehow.
You know, I just don’t really understand trade wars, or how any trade war can manage to tank world economies. Maybe I understand, on some small level, bloat when bloating comes to governmental agencies, such as the IRS and the Pentagon.Then there are all those other terrible economical sort of things that the legacy news media moguls deem we need to be fed nightly that bother me so.
But, there’s one thing that I think the legacy news media machine has grossly over looked here lately. That particular important factoid is the serious subject of inflationary worm prices. Worm costs have recently spiraled through the @#$% roof now days. Have you priced the top of the line cup of worms lately? It’s simply sinful, the rising cost of worms.
After decades as a dedicated worm digging aficionado, I’ve finally arrived at a time in my life where I can comfortably share the secret of building your own, DIY, happy little worm farm.
While there are a great many recipes for cultivating your own, (See You Tube if you don’t believe me. My favorite is the guy that’s gone all electric) it’s time to share with the world, how to simply save your disposable income, by growing your own fishing worms.
I find old hay and an eclectic mix of horse and donkey manure are good for starters. Throw in some fall leaves and a smattering of day old coffee grounds, some loose dirt and the right amount of water. Water seems to be key to happy worm existence, healthy reproduction and their ability to wiggle well.
I don’t really think that I fully understand ‘woke-ness’, or political correctness, all that clearly. DEI and all those other alphabet sort of things tend to confuse me to no end, more often than not.
But, I can rather proudly state, that that my worm bed is a highly diverse little worm community. There’s three basic worm types in this happy little town, coexisting in complete harmony, happy as clams.
I recon I could download some sort of new fangled worm ID app that would be a little bit more specific here, but who cares? The fish around these parts surely don’t.
There’s three basic worm species in this happy little diverse worm berg. There’s the old standby red wigglers we all grew up with. Red wigglers on the small side take about three good ones to cover a #8 gold hook, before they make an appetizing offering for most fish.
There’s the bigger and slower worms that are not all that red. These chubby, but dull looking worms, wear a distinctive white collar and are often big enough to cover the larger hooks completely, leaving some extra for a tantalizing tail that dangles seductively.
Last but not least, there’s this one worm in the neighborhood that rather eerily moves just like a baby snake. The bigger they are, the longer the hesitation can get, before tossing them in the bait bucket. This particular specie of worm is known for its prodigious amount of goo-like slime when impaled on the hook. It’s the kind of sticky slime that sticks in your mustache all day if you aren’t particularly careful.
Now, my buddy Odell, a registered fishing fanatic, who resides down on the backside of Sand Mountain, claims that my recipe for growing fat fish bait is entirely too labor intensive.
Odell swears that the best worm bed he ever built was facilitated by stripping his last x-wife’s mattress off of her bed and pitching it out in the backyard on top of some fresh chicken litter. Odell and I are in complete agreement on the coffee grounds and liberal use of good water though.
My wife Bubbles disagrees violently with Odell’s worm growing methodology for happy wigglers. I guess I’m stuck with the labor intensive method at this point in my worm husbandry career.
I tried worm fiddlin’ a time or two, but it’s been all for naught. When we lived in South Carolina I was in awe of the best worm fiddlers that the sand lapper state ever produced.
I once apprenticed myself to Old Buck, the best fiddler in Aiken, SC. Buck would drive an oak slab deep into his rich worm bed, and then play a slow, sad fiddle tune on the board using a rusty cross-cut saw. I thought he was pulling my leg until I had to leap out of the way when the longest night crawlers I had ever witnessed boiled up out of the earth with an attitude. Buck claimed the spent mash from his liquor still was the secret to long, happy crawlers. He said the tune he was playing with his saw was “Dixie.” That song drove the long Carolina wigglers plumb crazy, according to Old Buck.
Digging your own worms can get to your back at any time though. Tired of digging worms in 1949 in Akron Ohio, Nick Creme and his wife, invented the legendary ‘Creme Worm’. If you’ve ever spent any appreciable amount of time in Akron, you’ll easily understand their motivation for inventing this marvelous little counterfeit facsimile.
I imagine old Nick didn’t own any horses, donkeys, hay, an old still, or his wife’s mattress to throw out in the backyard. I imagine Nick may have had a bad back, or his wife may have flatly refused to dig his or her own worms. Who knows? So, Nick, tired of digging in Ohio dirt, resorted to vinyl and plastic substitutes, ultimately selling his new plastic worms mail order, 5 for a $1.00.
I guess you could say Nick revolutionized bass fishing, and at the same time, became a wealthy man selling his ‘clean’ worms. Mr.Creme is now enshrined in the Bass Fishing Hall Of Fame’s class of 2008 for his fake worm invention. It’s amazing sometimes what a lowly worm can do to a man’s inspiration.
I’ve yet to find a decent artificial cockroach lure for slab crappie killing. Live bait, they always say down in Alabama, is the only way to go.
There’s probably a Crappie Fishing Hall of Fame somewhere down here in the South. But, if there is in fact a hall nearby, I’ll bet they’d never allow anyone enshrinement in that hall who fished for crappie with banana eating cockroaches.
How could anyone get so hungry that they would eat something addicted to a cockroach? I don’t care how well it’s fried!
I’ll stick to worms, thank you!
Happy digging!
“I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
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