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Hickory nut worms.....I hear they taste just like the nut (per a neighbor that used to eat them in front of my older brothers to gross them out, LOL.) Those weed bulbs you mentioned were probably on goldenrod stems. Collecting maggots off of dead animals..... for some reason I am having trouble with that one.A hickory nut story for you though.... I had an uncle who lived in California and would come back to Indiana to visit in the Fall. He always drove a fancy , spotless car and wore good clothes , etc ...you get the picture. Anyhow, he decided to take some hickory nuts back to California with him, and went to a large "river nut" tree on our property and picked up a whole sack of them. They were beautiful . As you may know, the larvae actually bores out of the nut, so a perfectly good looking nut can later have a larvae boring out of them. Well, what he didn't know is that for some reason that particular tree was bad for having hickory nut worms. Anyhow, he gets halfway back across the country and stops at a motel. When he opens the trunk of his spotless , fancy car, what does he see but hickory nut worms crawling all over his trunk. HHD
If you use spikes, you're using maggots. Just saying
Here's one for all ice fishermen. Seems we have baitshops to get our bait, but what if there isn't a baitshop? It can be difficult to fish without live bait but it's there if you know where to look. One is what I was told is called blackeye susans. If you see a field that has a lot of standing weeds, look to see if those weeds have a "bulb" up the length of the stalk. The stalks on these weeks is about 3 feet long or longer. The "bulb" is caused by a grub that's made it's home there. Gather up as many bulbs as you can because not all of them will have a grub in them. You might have to go through 200 to 300 to get a few dozen grubs. Some guy up on Manitou years ago showed them to me and he was catching as many fish as I was. They were smaller than the beemoths I had but they caught fish. They were a white grub with a black spot where the head was. Another is what we call spikes. Spikes are nothing more that blowfly maggots. Now I know it would be difficult to find these in the winter time and I don't know how you would go about finding them, but I just wanted you to know what they are. I once told my son he should never be without bait and in the summer and warmer months, all you need to do is find a dead animal that's set out in the sun for a while. There should be maggots all over the dead animal. I found some of the biggest maggots in the plastic trash bin. Another place to look are mud dauber nests. When I lived in Missouri there were no baitshops open where I lived and my land lord had a big pond that froze over with some big gills. I had to improvise and made a short ice fishing rod and used and axe to chop some holes in the ice. Bait was my biggest problem. I gathered the weed balls and only got a few grubs but in the barns there were mud dauber nests every where. I didn't find much, but found enough bait to catch a few threw the ice. Another place is paper wasp nests. You won't find anything in them in the winter, but when they're active in the summer, they seem to be under almost every eave of the house. Knock the nests down, carefully so you don't get stung, and the grubs inside the nests make excellent bait. I look for wasp nests a lot in the summer months. Sure, it's easy to just pop into your local bait shop and get all your bait there, but in case the shops are closed you can find bait to fish with. One thing about those wasp nests, careful there aren't any larvae that have grown and almost hatching. But the white grubs will catch fish. Just thought I'd put out a little info for you guys n gals.
little strips of baconbacon makes everything bettereven the fish agree!!!Then you can have a snack if you get hungry.
Surprised no one mentioned Horseweed (Giant Ragweed) worms.
was those cocoons had a dia. of a dime and about 1"long?