Sarley: Giving the red light to green worms and other thoughts on using live bait when fishing

Have you ever seen a green worm? You have if you have taken a look around your local bait shop.

A lot of bait dealers carry green nightcrawlers in their refrigerators. They are regular nightcrawlers that turn green by feeding them with green food.

Now I eat a lot of salad, but I don’t see my complexion turning green, so I don’t know how this transformation works. Whatever it is, fishermen want to know if these green crawlers work. Sorry to say it, but I believe that they do not.

Nightcrawlers work better when they are large and plump, when they are kept cool and when they are lively. There is no evidence that says that green crawlers work any better than run-of-the-mill brown ones at all.

I am done with worms and it is time to turn to minnows. There are many different types of minnows available: crappie minnows, fathead minnows, shiners, both golden and emerald, creek chubs and suckers. Crappie minnows are the smallest and suckers are usually the biggest and the rest are in between.

Spence Petros told me that he had the occasion to find that crappie minnows worked best if you put female minnows on your hook. Who the heck can tell the sex of a tiny fish? Petros said that in May, the female crappie minnows were fatter than the males, so that is what he used. He claims it worked.

Huge suckers are favored by muskie fishermen in the fall. They toss these suckers out and wait for a big muskie to grab on and try to tun away. I don’t sucker fish for muskies, but I don’t look down on folks who do.

Minnows work best when they are lively. They need to be kept cool and aerated. Minnows are expensive, especially when you are killing them quickly. Bank fishermen should probably only purchase and carry a half dozen at a time.

An aerated live well is a must for boaters. Minnows can be transported, but it is tricky. You can buy minnows in bulk and have them put into big plastic bags that get filled with oxygen. It is a lot of work, too much trouble for me.

The type of minnow I will use if I am looking for bass, walleyes and Northern pike depends on the size of the minnows available at the bait shop. I think that the game fish are more interested in the size of the meal, more so than the flavor. Let me know if you agree with me.

Minnows need to be kept lively. The only time I see dead minnows work is when you use dead smelt on a dead stick rig when ice fishing for Northen pike.

You will need to learn how to impale your minnows on a hook in a way that will keep them alive the longest. I just stick crappie minnows under their dorsal fins and through the back. They die, but there is no alternative.

The other minnows get hooked through the lips most of the time. Some people just stick minnows through the top lip. I love to put a hook in a minnows mouth, run the hook down its throat and then bring it back out the gill plate.

Some anglers prefer to hook a minnow through the back. That is great if you don’t kill the minnow by going through its spine. I have hooked minnows through the tail. That is a bit unorthodox, but it allows the minnow to swim freely and face forward.

Please let me know your thoughts on live bait.

• Daily Herald Outdoors columnist Steve Sarley can be reached at sarfishing@yahoo.com.