Thread: Catawba Worms

CC - A friend of mine uses bluecat belly meat for catching blues on the big O. He slices up the meat into strips and hooks them on and is never out of bait. His leftovers go into the freezer until the next time he goes fishing. He never has to search for shad or perch or crappie heads laying around. A perpetual fishing machine. Recycling at its finest. I slapped myself when he told me what he was doing. Duhhhh

Here is what me and Dad figured out, you can wipe your worm crop out if you pick them all, so we pick out a big limb and leave them all on there, from everything I have read, the worms go back in the ground under the tree after there cycle on the tree, and go into there cocoon cycle and stay there all winter, the moth will only hatch out after the ground reaches above 60 degree's, she flys/climbs up and lays eggs on the underside of the leaves, the moth has a very short range that she can fly, so they usually fly climb straight up and start laying eggs, tree size make's no diff it is more to low limbs, that is why you see them more on young tree's because of the lower limbs Dad has some 24" dia tree's that have worms but the limbs almost touch the ground, so if your not seeing them on your tree's it's probable because there was not enough left to make it to the next year, could have been birds or wasps or over picking, either way you can restock your tree's just have to find someone that does not use them and go pick them and move to your tree's, tie some tin pans or something to keep the birds scared off, wasps well that is something to figure out, no flowers close to tree help some, this is the way my grandpa always started off a new crop of tree's, hope this helps some of you get you some of your worms back in your tree's, and as far as storing. blanch in boiling water, I drop them in and as soon as they come back up dip them out not sure how long never have timed it, but Im guessing less than a min. drop them in ice water, pat them dry and bag them up with 25 to a bag with corn meal. then freeze them, keep them out of the sun when fishing with them as in the ice chest and they will still have the bright colors and the green juice inside when you put them on the hook, freezing them in water has always turned them black so I always go with dry them and cornmeal them.