Was a lot easier when I was a kid. Good grief, the speed of them and my aching back!

Easy to catch @ the bait shop.

Yup, trouble is most of them have closed around me.

Try using a little smaller shot size and a modified choke,

In the spring before it gets hot, when it rains here in town I just walk the streets and pick them up out of the gutters and off the streets in the early morning.

do you do anything special ? I have tried that before ,but it seemed like they rarely lived more than a day.

When picking use a red light. It's been over 30 years since I picked. Made a lot of money doing it in high school. No wonder I couldn't stay awake in class.

I keep them in a refrigerator in a cooler with strips of wet newspaper. Heat will kill nightcrawlers pronto.

I keep them in damp peat moss and in the fridge. You have to check them every so often and get rid of any dead ones. One dead one will kill the lot. They emit a gas or something when they die and that will kill them all.

So yall ever heard of "sawing on a stump with a brick" trick?

It’s great to get 2 at once....when they are having sex...lol..

How would you like some giant scooping you and the misses up in the middle of it, Nessy?!?!

A real "rooster" blocker you are!

44 is the coldest that they come out at nite. every degree warmed, they get faster. Do not start at dusk wait until 12 midnite and they will be all the way out. Just pick the easy ones and dont fret the halfway out ones. 50 degrees is ok for storage for long time........jk oh as said above keep wet newspaper on top of them and they will not climb out, if uncovered you will find them all over the room.......jk

It’s been 50 years...but I still remember those lucky catches...lol

If you don't have a BB gun,,then duck tape a garbage bag over you snowblower discharge chute,,and go through the yard blowing them into the bag.

I used a red light or a dull yellow light to catch them. I always watered the lawn heavily, hours before dark. That way they were usually way out of their holes and you could just pick them up after dark.

I had a book written by a man who was one of the best walleye fisherman that ever lived, Bill Binkelman. He mostly used night crawlers and was adamant that they needed to be as healthy as the day you caught them when you went fishing. In one of his books, he only would use the type of bedding that came from ground up newspaper. Buss Bedding is the brand I found that was ground newspaper. Bill added water to the bedding until you could wring out some water. Very Important: After the bedding is well mixed, add the worms on top and let them find their way in. Next, he recommended adding wetted sheets of newspaper on top, only the paper with the black print and never the shiny paper. And store the crawlers in a refrigerator.

I had great luck using Bill's methods.

I appreciate all the advice,and didn't mean to hijack the thread. My real question was about Gary Benson picking them up after a rain, on the streets. I have tried that a few times and it seems like most of them die before I get them home and in to the bedding. The ones we pluck from the ground always seem to do much better.I don't go fishing with crawlers near as much as I use to , as my kids are all pretty well grown up. However, I do have a grandson that is getting close to fishing age.


When I was considerably younger our rule was , if you broke one or missed one that you tried for, you had to shut off your light and crawl around until you caught one by feel........and if we were playing hardcore rules, then you had to carry it back to the coffee can or bucket, in your mouth. Ah the good ol days.

Red light and move softly but rapidly

We had one area of a yard we sprinkled corn meal on a few days before picking, then watered the yard before dark.

You can feed them corn meal on top of the bedding but only lightly on top.

Ttt.