Join Waukesha resident Brien Lee and his blog, Sir Fido, as they explore the city and report on the interesting things they find.
Last year's fishing license expired yesterday so it must be time to think about spring fishing.
It stormed pretty good last night. The rain brought out the nightcrawlers so when Sir Fido took me for a walk this morning we had to either smoosh them, walk around them or collect them. As it pains me to spend good money on crawlers at the bait shop, the last couple years I've gathered my own then tried to keep them alive long enough to drown them. Tried, because even though I had "official" worm bedding last year, I still managed to kill them. Worms are very picky. They have to have the right moisture, food and cool temperatures.
It may be April Fool's Day but I'm not kidding when I say we probably gathered one hundred worms. All the zig-zagging Sir Fido does anyway helped us cover a lot of territory. We started by just grabbing the big ones off the sidewalk or in the street but got greedy and headed over to the school where we found the mother lode.
Other years, when I've stumbled upon crawlers by chance away from home, I've had to improvise. It's hard to pass up a huge crawler that's going to save you money at the bait shop just for lack of a container. I don't normally keep worms in my camera bag, but they seem pretty well fed at Waukesha County's parks so... This year, even though we were close to home, we used the same container for gathering as we use to collect waste on our walks - the plastic sleeve from the morning newspaper.
Newspapers are more than just another place to show off a picture of your trophy fish. Worms collected in a plastic bag from the newspaper are kept in a container full of wet bedding made of shredded newspaper. Guts from fish caught by worms are wrapped in newspaper and burried in the garden which feed next year's crop, of worms.
