anyone raise your own bait?

[cal okeefe]

ive been thinking of raising my own nightcrawlers or atleast fiding them and storing them.

any tips or ideas

[Leo Nguyen]

I have 4 vermicompost (worms), wax and mealworms all being raised in the garage and backyard. Not raising any cricket right now. They stink. I now also have beetle larvae..so, yes. Plenty of worm baits. Quite easy to raise. Great project to help my kids and the surrounding neighbors about self sustaining.

[cal okeefe]

ya night crawlers are about 3dollars a dozen and waxies are about 2.50 for 2 dozen getting expensive.. in spring i will fish about 4 days a week weather permitting..

i would really like to raise waxworms because thats what i use 80 percent of the time

 

so how do you raise waxies leo?

[Leo Nguyen]

Nightcrawler start up at $50 for 500. 6 months later, you'll have about 2500. Got 2 dozen used 1. 6 weeks later, I got hundreds. Mealworms of 30 turns into hundreds.

[Leo Nguyen]

Part 2 of the reply. Sorry, was starting dinner and did a quick reply. Didn't finish everything.

Instead typing up what I did, here's a quick run-down:

http://www.catfish1.com/forums/f184/raising-your-own-wax-worms-3881...

[JBplusThuy]

Just the worms in my composter. There's an old book called Lunkers Love Nightcrawlers that has a lot of good nightcrawler and fishing info. No, I ain't selling mine ;-) It shows up on eBay once in a while.

[Leo Nguyen]

That's where I bought my spikes and waxworms during the summer. Great deals, and fast shipment too. Got it in two days via priority mail. The spikes appears to be between 5 to 7 days, entering into their second phase. Stink like a freaking toilet when they arrived. They were active bunch. About 10% died during shipment due to rough handling.

[David, aka, "McScruff"]

Ive raised worms. It isn't hard, but you cant be in a hurry. They will take months to reach a useful quantity. They require monitoring, too - you can't just forget them. They need food and water like any other creature. They dont take much attention, but you have to keep up with them.

You can raise them in large plastic tote bins, in a climate controlled space. That's very neat and they can be made to self-separate over time. This means that you wont have to hunt for them when you want them, as they will migrate to one spot in the bin. It's a pretty neat experiment, but probably the best way to to do it with the least effort is to let them grow in a backyard compost pile.

You prep it by placing a barrier below that they cannot get out of and them let Nature take its course. Some plastic window screen comes to mind, for example. My old neighbor sunk a bathtub in his yard, and raised them in that! Ive never tried anything as ambitious as that, but it worked for him.

The other baits mentioned are not worms at all, but the larvae of beetles, flies and moths. You become something of a "bug rancher" with these. However, the results are probably worth it -  I say "probably" since I have never fished with waxies, mousies, or even maggots. Personally, I like the humble worm.

A very good place to start is Google. Just search the words "worms - bait - do it yourself -  backyard," etc.  Another source of information is The Mother Earth News. They have a searchable data base, and as I recall, good information on making "worm farms" on the cheap.