How to Produce Fishing Worms

Creating your own fishing worm farm can save you money on bait, make money for you when you sell your product to other anglers, and has the added benefit of producing rich compost for your garden. The easiest bait worms to produce are red worms. They live closer to the soil surface than earthworms and are therefore better able to thrive in the shallow environment of a compost bin. These worms also reproduce very fast; eight worms can become 1,500 in as little as six months.

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Plastic bin
10 pounds shredded newspaper, cardboard or printer paper
1 gallon of garden soil
4 gallons of water
4 pounds red worms
Large sheet of plywood or plastic

Instructions

- 1
  
  Choose your container. Red worms aren't picky about their living environment; a plastic bin which is one foot deep, two feet wide and three feet long will work just fine.
- 2
  
  Prepare the bedding for your worms. Shredded newspaper, cardboard or printer paper all make good worm bedding; you will need about 10 pounds of paper to fill your container.
- 3
  
  Add one gallon of garden soil to your paper bedding to provide the grit worms need for digestion.
- 4
  
  Add four gallons of water; pour the water in slowly and stir the paper and soil as you go so that the bedding gets thoroughly moist, but not soggy.
- 5
  
  Wait two days after preparing the bedding before adding worms to the bin. This delay is necessary because the bedding may heat up at first and this extra heat can harm your worms.
- 6
  
  Add about two pounds of red worms for each pound of food waste your household produces each day. You can get your initial stock from a local bait shop.
- 7
  
  Feed your fishing worms plant-based food waste only. Meat and meat bones can cause your compost bin to develop a foul odor, which can in turn attract rodents and other pests.
- 8
  
  Feed by pushing back the top inch or so of bedding, adding the food and covering it with the inch of bedding. You don't need to grind or otherwise prepare the food before adding it to the bin.
- 9
  
  Place the food in different sequential locations in the bin each time you feed your worms to avoid uncovering decomposing leftovers.
- 10
  
  Maintain a temperature between 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal growth and reproduction of your worms. They can tolerate temperatures as low as 40 and as high as 90, but these conditions are not ideal.
- 11
  
  Harvest the larger worms from your bin two months after setup and every month afterward.
- 12
  
  Dump the compost bin onto a sheet of plywood or plastic in a cone-shaped pile. As the worms move deeper into the pile to escape the light, remove the top few inches of compost. Wait a few minutes for the worms to move deeper again, and repeat until most of the compost is gone and you're left with a pile of mostly worms.
- 13
  
  Prepare fresh bedding in your bin and return the egg cases and smaller worms you didn't harvest to the new bedding.
- 14
  
  Use the collected compost on your garden or houseplants.