Lobworms and worms

Lobworms are large — up to 20 cm extended — soft, pinkish-brown, with a pronounced saddle and a flattened tail. Dendrobaenas are shorter, thicker, banded and considerably tougher, which is why they stay on a hook better. Brandlings are small, strongly striped, and release a pungent yellow fluid when damaged, which some anglers regard as an attractant and others as a deterrent.

Dendrobaenas and brandlings are farmed and sold by weight; both are also readily cultivated at home in a wormery, which is by some distance the cheapest and most reliable supply. Lobworms are collected from short grass at night after rain, when they lie out on the surface — approached slowly with a dim, preferably red-filtered light and picked before they retract. Collect from your own ground or with permission; collecting from land you do not have permission to be on is trespass regardless of what you are collecting.

Cool, dark, moist but not wet, in a container with air. Worms keep well for weeks in damp shredded newspaper, coir or leaf mould at a few degrees above freezing, and lobworms in particular toughen and become better bait after a week or two in clean damp bedding — a process anglers call scouring, which empties the gut and firms the body. Remove any dead worms promptly; one decaying worm will spoil a container.

Worms need damp bedding, air, cool temperatures and darkness. They do not need feeding over an angling timescale, though a wormery for long-term culture does. Never leave a bait box of worms in direct sun or in a car, which kills them within minutes.

Scour lobworms in damp moss or clean bedding for a week or two if you can; it toughens them, makes them lighter in colour and much livelier on the hook. Chop worms for feed where a strong scent trail is wanted — chopped worm is a distinct and very effective loose feed in its own right. Sort by size before a session so you are not searching for the right worm in the dark.

For a whole lobworm, hook it once through the saddle so both ends are free to move, or thread the head on and leave a long tail. For dendrobaenas, hook through the collar and let the body hang, or use two or three on a larger hook. For small fish, half a worm or a small brandling is enough. The commonest presentation error is burying the whole worm on the hook so that nothing moves — the movement is a large part of what a worm offers.

Take unused worms home and keep them; they are the easiest bait of all to reuse. Do not release worms into the wild where you have been fishing. Composting or wormery species are frequently not local, and introducing non-local earthworm species has documented ecological effects in some regions — a consideration that matters far more in North America and northern Europe than most anglers realise. Unwanted worms go into a wormery or into domestic compost, not onto the bank.

The worms themselves present a very low risk to fish. The bedding, the water in the tub and the container do not: rinse and dry between waters. Do not introduce worm bedding into a fishery.