How to take care of nightcrawlers

[lakevet]

Any good homemade recipes for worm bedding and tips for keeping crawlers long term? Ideal temp? Thinking of trying some ice fishing for eyes. Also any tips on favorite way to "condition" and keep crawlers in your boat in august?

lakevet

[SledNeck]

bait cooler with the crawler packs in it works for august

[Jim Almquist]

My dad would collect all his crawlers in the spring and keep them all summer but they had to be stored in a cool spot. We had a tuck under garage and the back of the garage was cool enough. He had a 2'x4'with 2' walls and he filled it 2/3 full of dirt and would always put the crawler on top and let them go into the dirt by themselves so if you had any bad ones they would stay on top. He would cover the dirt with a couple of layers of damp newspapers. You would have to change out the newspapers every couple of weeks because the crawlers would eat the stuff up and it would deteriorate. When we would go fishing for the day we would pack the crawlers in damp newspaper in a cooler with some blue ice. They would be really lively and there would be no dirt on the floor.

[lakevet]

Thanks for the input. Does the newspaper have to be mostly black and white? Or is the colored ink a factor. I assume its just ground up newspaper that the bait shops pack crawlers in. I got a spot in the shop that would stay 45-50F all winter.

lakevet

[Jim Almquist]

We just used the black and white. Those temps should be perfect or long term storage. Just make sure that when ever you add any that you put them on top and let them crawl into the dirt by themselves. We would always go out and get our crawlers on a warm rainy night in late April or early May and walk down the streets and pick them up by the 1000 but we would only keep a couple 100 for our use and the rest we would sell for gas money for our fishing trips.