The Baits & Flavours Column

He is affectionately known as Dave the Flave due to his love affair with baits and flavours and is a self-confessed flavour junky.

Part 4 – The Humble Worm – THE LOBWORM – The Big Boy In The Box

There can’t be anyone who has had the pleasure of holding a rodand standing bankside that does not know of or has not used thisclassic angling bait. And rightly so as it has probably accounted formore fish than any other bait in use today.

You can chop it, pop it, use it halved, whole, double, just the tail; the combinations are endless as are the species that will readily devour this almost legendary bait. Truly a bait without seasons except there are some months when it gets even better. Check out all those perch and chub pictures filling the pages of the angling mags, and almost all of them caught on lobworm!

Collecting and Keeping

Although lobworms are available via mail order and in most local tackle shops, if you are prepared to put in a little effort and ignore the few strange looks and questions you will no doubt encounter you can get them for FREE!

Just pick a warm, windless night, arm yourself with a dim torch or headlight (a good tip is to put some red cellophane paper over the lens if it is a bright light as it is thought that worms don’t react to red light) a bucket containing some wetted strips of newspaper, and away you go.

This must be the only worm used by anglers that has so many different and successful ways of being kept, which just goes to show how easy it can be to keep a supply of these perfect fish catchers in your box whenever you go fishing.

With this in mind we will keep this section to a few guidelines.

First, and most important if you are keeping different worms, DO NOT keep the lobs in the 50/50 manure/peat mix or any kind of manure material as they will not survive for long!

The other main ‘don’t’ is do not feed them waste scraps as with compost worms; although they do eat decaying vegetation it is mostly in the form of leaves.

I think the most common way to keep lobs must be in shredded newspaper; this is simply thoroughly wetted newspaper strips put into a bucket. The lobs will happily live in this and as they eat the paper it also toughens the body to a certain extent.

FISHINGmagic member Bob Gill who requires a constant supply for his barbel angling recently submitted a good example of keeping lobworms long term to the FM forum.

What you need

• A small plastic dustbin with a lid (the one Bob uses is approx 300mm diameter x 420mm deep).
• Some Hessian sacking, enough to cover the top with an overlap.
• Some old newspapers and dried leaves.
• A shady spot in the garden and a hole for the dustbin to sit in.
• Make some small drainage holes in the bottom of the bin – not too large or the worms will do a disappearing act!
• Tear up the newspapers into strips, soak well and pull apart. Add a couple of handfuls of dried (Autumn) leaves. Squeeze off the excess water from the pulp. Fluff it up and place in the bin until it is around half full.
• Cut the Hessian sacking so that it fits between the lid and bin lip – this prevents the worms crawling out through the gap in the top.
• Bury the bin (to approx 3″” from the lip) in a shaded secluded part of the garden; an alternative site is in the shed or garage.
• Bob uses a piece of plywood to shield the bin from any rain and direct sunlight. Lobworms, like other worms, hate sudden temperature changes, so take this into account when siting your worm bins or boxes.
• Check your worms regularly for any casualties and also to add more leaves. The bin described holds around 150 worms and will keep them in fine form for months.
• Bob also recommends having two, just in case you have a disaster and then you always have the other to fall back on – vital if they are one of your main baits.

Over the past year I have been keeping my personal supply of lobworms in nothing more than stacking storage boxes filled with ordinary garden soil and just topping it off with soaked shredded newspaper and some moss. They certainly seem to be thriving well enough, but do change the soil every now and then and add some leaves to the newspaper feed.

Some Goodies For The Worm Angler

There are a couple of items now available in tackle shops to help the worm angler, the first is the Worm Turn Box, this is simply a polystyrene box with a lid on both ends. Instead of rooting through the contents to find the worms which invariably always make their way to the bottom you simply turn the box over and there they are. Sneaky eh! Also, being polystyrene it acts as a very good cool box too. The only place I have seen them advertised is from Davies Angling in Middlesex at £ 3.99. They also offer a Twin Worm Turn Box that is partitioned allowing two types of worms to be carried also at £ 3.99.

The other item is for fisheries that only allow barbless hooks, or for anglers who prefer them. With these it’s a catch 22 situation for the worm angler for we always select a lively looking bait for the hook but without a barb this means the worm often does a runner whilst we are sitting, confidently watching the float or tip.

The trick was to use a small section of rubber band pushed on after the worm, not only did this stop the worm escaping but it also helped ensure a clear hook point. But now those clever guys at Enterprise Tackle have also thought about this problem and came up with a perfect alternative, the Worm Stop. Such a simple answer and with its supplied applicator tool all the fiddling around is a thing of the past and at only £ 1.25 for the tool and 24 stops it’s a bargain.

Air Injected Lobworm

This really has to be my favourite method of presenting a worm. If done properly it can be balanced using a shot to make the worm sit up with its tail on the bed and its head held high almost in a snake charmer stance and can prove devastating.

If you do want to use popped up worm then the only way to do it is to inject some air into the worm using a syringe. This must be done with the utmost care to ensure you do not stick yourself and accidentally inject air into yourself instead. I find the safest way is to lay the worm on a solid surface such as your tackle box, and then to pin the worm down with your fingers. Also use a small bore needle available from most chemists as this makes it easier to get the balance right and you do not have a great long needle sticking out like the ones sold for deadbaits, etc.

The Twig Rig

Not a new innovation just an adaptation of an old one that was shown to me by an old ‘gent’ of angling that I used to regularly bump into on the bank many years ago. When I was in my teens and eager to learn he graciously took the time to show me many tactics and answer my constant barrage of questions with great patience and always a smile. He also taught me to really appreciate two of his favourite species, the perch and the eel. Not to everyone’s liking but to this day I still rate these as top of my list of favourites although I don’t spend anywhere near enough time fishing for them as I used to, but it still brings a broad smile to my face when I see a photo in the angling presses of a specimen perch in all its glory, fin erect in defiance, or a big eel that has allowed itself to be photographed and given the captor a shot of a lifetime.

I’m sure my old friend no longer walks the banks these days due to the passing years but he left me with fond memories and greater angling skills that I now proudly hand down to my children.

During his many forays on the river he often used to hunt out the chub and it was with these in mind he showed me his ‘Twig Rig’, a simple idea that could fool the wariest of fish.

You couldn’t get any simpler with the bits needed, and if you lost it, it didn’t cost the earth, it simply involves a twig of around 3 to 6 inches in length, and two rubber float bands, one on either end of the trimmed twig cut to suit the needs and conditions of the day (more flow bigger twig). This is used as a horizontal float and allows you to drift an almost free-lined lobworm under overhangs and bushes, but with the ‘Twig Rig’ you are sure of the depth the worm is trotted through at and best of all it doesn’t stand out to the fish!

I have also used the Twig Rig with great success when margin fishing for perch and also carp on stillwaters where all the usual debris collected round the reed stems often means that I can place my ‘twig’ amongst this perfectly without alarming the fish.

Over the years I have seen many variations of this rig, I have even seen it refined to the stage of having eyelets added to the twig to allow it to be used as a free running surface controller for wary carp, so you can be assured it has stood the test of time and really works. He never laid any claims to the Twig Rig but he was ever eager to share the successes of it.

I hope this series has helped to show how easy it is to keep a regular supply of worms for your fishing and maybe a few hints on using them.

It just remains for me to hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and that you got all the ‘bits’ you wanted in your stockings (the mind boggles at that!) and I look forward to reading about how you use them.

Finally I wish you all good fishing and many new personal bests in the New Year.