[Billfish715]

The simple things in life are too soon overlooked and forgotten. Gathering free bait is just one of those things. Now, picking nightcrawlers in a public area at night with a flashlight is liable to spark a series of 911 calls about a suspicious person in the area. I have my doubts if even the local law enforcement people would understand what was going on even after an explanation.

Most kids today won't ever know the fun they can have hunting for bait especially for worms, as long as they know they can buy them somewhere. As I mentioned before, buying bait was not an option when I was a kid and wanted to go fishing. We would dig bait in backyard gardens, or in a farmer's manure pile ( Oh, yes we did.) or turning over leaves in the woods to find those slimy, soft bodied worms that broke in half on the hook. Or we would make minnow traps out of clear gallon glass containers, or dough balls with flour from mom's kitchen. We sometimes seined minnows with burlap potato sacks that we got from the local grocer. Nobody thought twice about gathering maggots from a road killed animal. There was something about which to be proud whenever you caught a fish with bait that you had made or gathered.