You may want to try out a cousin of the Red Wiggler. That is the European Night Crawler. It's actually not a night crawler. It's just a larger red worm. I find it comparable to the Red Wiggler in both composting and breeding.

Hi Carolyn, I had started a bin with buying five containers of "Extra large redworms" in a bait shop. I checked the container and they were redwroms. They had nightcrawlers too. They might have been tiger redworms? They came 25 in a container so I started out with 125 worms in a bin. Those were for fishing and for some time I thought I didn't have any big worms left, but one day before a fishing trip as I dug in I could only find small worms, Then I took a pitch fork and turned one half of the bin upside down and there were many large worms on the bottom. Maybe they come up at night to feed but during the day they were all at the bottom except the babys.
Later I got the EF redworms for garden soil impovement and now I have five worm bins. Two have the large worms and three have the smaller worms for composting rotten fruit and vegetables. I think someone once said to feed them chicken egg layer crumbles and that would fatten them up or corm meal also. I have not done that to experiment as i just feed the worms all the same food. You can search here on fishing worms or how to fatten redworms and I'm sure you will get some good anwers. Bill C

If the folks are asking for fishing worms, then maybe that's the direction you should take. Sounds like you're in great fishing country.

My husband and I fish at a large reservoir frequented by other avid fishermen. We were kidding around one day about what we'd do when we retire. Because the bait store near the reservoir went out of business, we said it would be a great idea to travel around all the boat landings in a van. We'd call it "Worms on Wheels." And, of course, we'd sell hot coffee & doughnuts, too!

Anyway, the point is, find the need and fill it.

Sell the red wrigglers by their strong points. I've read in numerous places that though the wriggler is smaller than the crawler, it got it's name because it wriggles on the hook unlike the crwaler therefore drawing much more attention. They also survives in the water much longer than the crawler.

Hi onefatgerman; Where did you get the notion that Lumbriscus terrestris die faster in water than any other worm except worms that live in water all the time. Any earthworm can and will live a very long time in well aireated water. Time measured in days. If you want to experiment try this little trick. Take a worm and put it in water jug at the lower end of its temperature preference zone and run a air stone connected to a air pump and see what happens. When the worms get as large as (takes 12 hours or so) they can be, go fishing with them or sell them as anacondas for the species involved. Old bait trick for very large worms. As to the more wiggling on the hook more nerves stimulated by hooking smaller worm. Big needles hurt big little needles hurt less.

1kittle, from a biologists perspective I think you may be oversimplifying.

Hi brendon of bonsai; Well when talking about worms dying on a fishing hook. I figured one would be casting frequently(causing tearing of worms skin tissue) or just using the throw it out and wait for a bite method of fishing. In either case the worm would not die really rapidly from causes from lack of oxygen(suffocation implyed by quick death. Biologist or not if you do the experiment it will surprise you. I've done it lots of times and it works. The worms simply absorb the water and swell up. There are few worms that can stand up to the Lts for fishing thats why they are used and prefered by fisherman reguardless of the quarry.