To an artificial lure-only snob, an earthworm is an earthworm. Not to knowledgeable freshwater live-bait anglers, though.
To them, earthworms come in three flavors.
Most commonly available at bait shops today are Canadian night crawlers (Lumbricus terrestris), commonly called “cold worms” because they are stored in a refrigerator.
Canadian night crawlers are long, fat and flabby. The largest one on record was 20 inches long, although 8 to 10 inches is more normal.
It is actually an invasive species originally from Europe. It arrived in North America with early white settlers and found an ideal home in southern Canada (hence the name). In the wild, these worms live in permanent mucus-lined burrows that can extend 6 feet underground.
Unlike other earthworms, Canadian night crawlers don’t just eat its way through the soil. Rather it comes to the surface at night to feed on decaying or dead plant matter. It also mates on the surface.
Its large size makes it suitable for large hooks like those used on trotlines or for use as a natural trailer on artificial lures.
It’s the darling of live-bait dealer because it lives for extremely long periods of time if kept refrigerated.
Second on the list is the worm Charles Johnson calls the “jumping worm” and organic gardening advocates (vermicomposters) hawk as the “Alabama jumper.” It carries the scientific name Amythas gracilis.
It is a medium-sized (4 to 6 inches long) worm that is very muscular and strong. It moves with a snake-like motion, and will quickly burrow back into the ground when exposed by a digger.
Their strength allows them to burrow into compacted soils, and they wiggle and twist seductively on a hook.
It is not native to North America, either, and — like other invasive exotic earthworms — likely arrived through the horticulture trade. Being native to Southeast Asia, it prefers warmer temperatures than does the nightcrawler, and has made itself perfectly at home in the southern United States.
They eat soil and decaying organic matter and, unlike the night crawler with its vertical burrows, they live in more-horizontal burrows.
This worm is almost never sold by bait dealers, in spite of its excellence as bait. They are large enough to use on catfish hooks, but small enough to use on bream hooks.
The third worm used as live bait is the red wiggler (Eisenia fetida), usually called simply “redworm.”
Redworms are also exotics introduced from Europe (North America didn’t have many earthworms before white folks got here), and usually measure only 2 to 3 inches long.
It is neither as flabby as a nightcrawler nor as muscular as a jumping worm. It differs from the other two species in that it is not a strong burrower, preferring life on the soil’s surface or just below it. It feeds in rotten vegetation or manure.
Some anglers used to raise redworms by keeping a bin beneath rabbit hutches, where they thrived and multiplied by feeding on the rabbit feces falling through the hardware cloth floors of the hutches.
It was win-win for the anglers. They got rabbits to eat and all the earthworms they ever needed for fishing.
This is a warm-climate worm that does well in Louisiana or Mississippi if given the proper conditions, such as the rabbit hutch scenario. They are excellent bait, but their small size means they are only practical for use on small bream hooks.
When handled, they exude a foul-smelling liquid (think of what they eat), but the odor is mild and few fishermen notice it — especially if they are baiting hooks in the middle of a hot bite on a bream bed.
Redworms can still be purchased at some bait shops, but because they don’t store as well as cold worms they have lost favor with many bait suppliers and dealers.
Regardless of the kind of worm, all earthworms are hermaphrodites, which means they carry both male and female parts located near opposite ends of the worm. To make whoopee, two worms lie side-by-side pointing in opposite directions and fertilize each other simultaneously.
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