[Billfish715]

Mark, Your experiences stir up great memories from my youth. Digging our own worms! Wow! A coffee can for a bait bucket, a pitchfork, a flashlight ( for night crawlers ) is all you needed. Buying bait? What?

We found worms at a manure pile at a farm on our way to a pond. No. Mom didn't drive us. We rode our bikes. Try to find a manure pile in any neighborhood today. Try to find a farm! If we went to a different pond or stream, we would find
"piss worms" under the leaves. They were slimy and usually broke in half if you tried to put a hook in them.

Did you ever have your mom help you find night crawlers? I did, until I pulled a fat crawler out of a hole. That's when I paraphrased what the older boys called them........c..k suckers. Bam! A right cross by Mom to my lip put an end to that bait gathering adventure!

We learned to keep worm farms (wooden boxes with layers of newspaper, dirt, leaves, and compost filled with garden worms or night crawlers) for those summer days when digging worms was difficult. Powere Bait? How about gummy white bread or homemade dough balls flavored with vanilla or some other extract from the closet.

Thanks, Mark.