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nickt59

Help to ID European Night Crawlers

nickt59
11 years ago

Sorry for the long story...

I have been keeping 2 simple rubbermaid bins for fishing worms, one with reds and one ENC. After 10 years, I can't tell the difference between these two worms. Honestly, my ENC never attained the size of some of the original batch. They have never looked as big as the smaller panfish worms sold in many bait stores. I suspect my batch was not pure ENC and due to my sometimes poor care, any original ENC died off and left me with reds in both bins.

I have been giving both bins VIP treatment since May. Temperature is up to 75. Feeding cornmeal, greens, coffee grinds, shredded newspaper. The largest worms in both bins are now 3.5" long by 3/16" wide. They are both dropping eggs. At this size, I cannot really be sure if they are nice size redworms or smallish ENC.

So after all this babble, the question is how easy is it to get ENC to grow larger than redworms? If mine were ENC, would they have easily grown larger than reds in a simple storage bin? Or is there some special care needed to get ENC to be any larger than redworms? I don't want to buy new ENC and then learn it was a problem with my care. Thank you for any help or additional tips to ID my worms.

Comments (4)

  • mendopete
    11 years ago

    I have heard the bigger the worm-bed the bigger the worm. I know it is true with redworms. Try a bigger bin.

    Your worms sound way to large for redworms in a plastic tote bin. A pic would help but they sound like euros.

    Nick, where are you and what do you fish for?

    Pete

  • nickt59
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Thanks for the reply Pete. I think a bigger bin might help, but I can't get too wild with this. My bin is about 15"x 30", so not super tiny. Interesting that you mention I still might have euros, I'm starting to think that too. I looked at many sites yesterday and I found a guy that had a video of his redworm bin. He was commenting on how nice and big his redworms were. They were clearly smaller and thinner than my current worms.
    So my current worms are apparently bigger than redworms, but they are a good bit smaller than the worms sold in Walmart and as panfish worms. I heard the smaller panfish worms were euros at Walmart. Thinking back, many of my redworms were thin and tricky to thread on a hook. There were some bigger ones in there too, so maybe I had a mixed batch and the euros took the lead after I almost dried them to nothing this winter. I'll try attaching a photo of worms on a 3x5 card.

    I am in the mid-hudson valley area of NY. We live on a lake. I'm not a die-hard fisherman, but with the lake right here, I pretty much have to throw a line in whenever I have a few minutes to kill. We have sunnies, perch, crappies, catfish, bass and pickerel. No trout here. My more serious fishing friends laugh at my small worms, but they catch fish.

  • mendopete
    11 years ago

    As a lifelong fishing fanatic, let me give you some advice. It ain't the size of the worm, it is how you wiggle it!;) I caught many large fish on smaller worms than in your photo. They look much bigger than my redworms that are in a larger outdoor horse manure windrow system.

  • nickt59
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    lol. Having a constant supply of worms, I don't hesitate to thread even a tiny one on pretty much any fishing lure for a little added taste.

    I guess I have to think about whether or not to replace my redworm population or just go with euros. I need to experiment with getting these guys a little bigger, but they do work fine as they are.

    Thanks for your help!