Wondering about fishing worms and trout streams.

Back when I was young and still lived at home, I spent a lot of time fishing on the closest crick.  Yes I mean crick, not a creek.  Do you know the difference?  A creek is beautiful, crystal clear, cascading water over rocks creating waterfalls and quite pools.  A crick is a stream that usually has cows wading in it and old refrigerators and junked cars and who knows what hiding in the depths.  OK, the stream that I fished was somewhere between the two.  Now, I have fished some beautiful mountain creeks and even caught cut-throat trout out of the Yellowstone River back when I was 16.  When at Yellowstone, a bear tried to steal my stringer of trout tied to the shore.  I waded in as fast I could and swatted it with my fly rod and it ran away.  A fellow saw that and said never do that again that I was lucky I got away with it.  He said the week before someone did that and got mauled.

OK, back to Pennsylvania when I was a boy.  There was never enough room on most of the cricks I fished to use flies, so the good old night crawler or earth worm was the bait of choice.  Part of fishing was getting the bait.  There used to be a pile of old hay at the edge of the woods a little ways from our house where worms could be found around the bottom edges.  I also would go out at night and catch night crawlers.  Sometimes that didn't provide enough and it took a lot of time.  So, I found me a steel rod and bent the end in a vice to form a handle.  The other end I sharpened to a point.  Then I found an old extension cord and taped the hot wire to the rod.  The electricians tape was the insulation.  It worked great, especially in wet ground.  You see, you just plug it in and stick it in the ground and if there are any worms around they just come popping out of the ground.  I learned real quick not to grab the worms that were too close to the rod!!  But this gadget worked well and I always had a quick source of worms to use as bait.  I could collect a days worth of bait in a couple of minutes.  You did have to be careful with it, or you could fry yourself (grin), but I was young and indestructible, or so I thought.  Now you all go fishing if you can or want to, but what ever you do just enjoy yourselves, you hear?