How do you put red wigglers in your hook?

Okay, this may sound stupid but I am having a hell of a time putting red wigglers on the hook. Those little buggers are easy enough to control but threading them and hooking them is a bear. Small pieces break off, they break in half and they are simply too small to do much with.

These are the regular red wigglers, tiny little worms 2-4 inches long and pencil lead thin just to make sure we are on the same hook.

What am I missing here? Do you hook them once through the middle? Thread them on head first and let the tail dangle? Is there some other trick to this I am missing?

I plan to try and take my kids to the local panfish lake Monday so any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

get you 3 or 4 boxes of the canadian night crawlers. i think about 12 to the box that you need to keep in a cooler on ice. pinch about 3/4 of and inch off the worm and put them on the hook. they'll last a lot longer and sometimes you can catch 2,3, or 4 bream on the same piece of worm. especially if you don't keep them in the cooler and they start dying they get tougher to get off the hook. i'll catch a limit, 50, of big bream and no telling how many smaller bream that i throw back culling to the 50 limit on 2 boxes of worms. much easier to handle and put on the hook than the red wigglers.


old

True, I can do that but raising the redworms I have literally 1000's of them for basically free. When I am taking 3 kids under 10 years old fishing for perch, gills, crappie and whatever else it is good not to have to spend $30 a day on worms.

No one has any tips for hooking on these little buggers???

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Originally Posted by fish_4_all

Okay, this may sound stupid but I am having a hell of a time putting red wigglers on the hook. Those little buggers are easy enough to control but threading them and hooking them is a bear. Small pieces break off, they break in half and they are simply too small to do much with.

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This is a major reason why I rarely use redworms. I'd sell the ones you've got and start raising meal worms instead. They're great bait and much easier to handle.

Well I may just have to break down and order some European redworms and African nightcrawlers so I don't have to deal with these tiny worms unless I want to.

Mealworms are an option but a pain in the neck at times. Might have to try the 5 gallon bucket method so I dont have to sort them as often or maybe a larger storage conatiner than a shoe box. Especially if I am gonna use them as bait on a regular basis.

I grew up raising and fishing with the redworms.......keep your worm box covered with wet burlap.....and keep it wet.....sprinkle corn meal and coffee grinds on top of the dirt.......burlap on top

for hooking them up.....hook them in the middle with just the bottom of the hook......do not thread them up the hook........that lets both ends wiggle...very important to keep the point of the hook covered.....if you don't, they will not bite it......one of the best baits there is.....catch bream, sacs, catfish and bass......any questions...holler back....

have you fished much in your life? at 5 years old i didn't have a problem baiting my own hook. i'm sure your kids/grandkids can even if you can't.

i put the hook through about a 1/4 inch from the end of the worm and kind of loop the worm a little and put it through the hook again and keep doing it till the worm is through the hook three or 4 times. i saw someone say hook it middleways throught the hook so that both ends can wiggle, i think thats just giving a fish a worm, all they are gonna do is bit one end that is wigglin and take the worm. if your using 4 inch redworms, that means you will have 2 inches hangin over each side of the hook, when the fish hit it, the hook is nowhere even close to the fishs mouth. just hook the worm 3 or 4 times and its done.

O.K. now play nice:)!

Hold worm between thumb and index finger. Thread a piece on as long as the hook. Break off the rest and catch 3 or 4 bream before having to re-bait.;)

Thank you to the rest of you for helping.

Could I be using too big a hook? Trying to put them in a #6 or #4 baitholder might just simply be too big of a hook.

oh, i see you are from wa.


ok.

Use a #6 or a #8 carlisle bream hook and hook them 2 or 3 times and you should be fine. Could the red wigglers are immature and therefore too small?

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Originally Posted by olduckhunter

oh, i see you are from wa.


ok.

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Yep,from the wettest, suckiest, out in the middle of now where everybody knows everyone but could care less about anyone else sucks ville. Us hillbilly backwards arse folks don't have many cow pies to dig in up here. Trust me I wish I haven't lived here so long that my toes and fingers are webbed and I have mold growing behind my ear drums.

Honestly olduckhunter, how do you do it? Now that we have the we can take one and give one out of the way.

I can't belive the ruckus over a simple question. Like Cricket George said, use a smaller hook. 'Gills have small mouth anyway. I like to use an 8 or 10 abredeen, but the same size in an offset baitholder is good also.

I use #8 circle hooks. I do it like southern young gun but I start about an inch from one end and leave about an inch hanging off the other end. I did use a size 6 hook, but the circle hooks hook a lot more gills without them shallowing it. My worms are from 3/16 to 1/4 inch thick. Of course, when you are trying to impale them they make themselves as thin as a thread. ;)
When I fish for channel cats, I put two or three worms on a hook. So there, is a whole glob of worms.
I raise my own worms, but I think they are Canadian worms--not the red wrigglers I used when I grew up. The price of box at wally world is about 3 bucks.
Good luck.

Marion

In Va red worms are like ten cent more a pack but you get 28-32 red wigglers for 2.89 compared to the nightcrawlers at 12 for 2.79, Ive found while yellow perch and white perch fishing they really like wigglers better, Fish4 try a snelled gold aberdeen 4 or 6 and starting at the head thread 3/4 of the worm on the hook. But for bream fishing during summer get the crawlers use a whole one for the shellcrackers

Like I told olduckhunter, we can move on now. Chalk it up to a bad day or whatever, pieces said and done.

How big are your red wigglers? The largest ones I get are about 4 inches and about as thick as 1/4 inch at their widest point near the ring collar thing, largest fatest ones being maybe a little larger. Who knows, maybe my bins are over populated and they are just smaller than they should be but when I got them they were about the same size. Will have to thin them out and see if I can fatten them up. Most of mine are about the width of the inside ink part of a pen and 3 inches if I am lucky.

Once through the collar with a #8 long shank aberdeen hook.