>>>>First, use Canadian Nightcrawlers. Capture them without touching them with your bare hands.
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>>>hmmm...I don't think I would make it past step 1; it sounds like the hardest step :)
>>>
>>>I don't even know if we have any varieties of nightcrawler around these parts.
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>>They are around, if you have a lumpy lawn more than likely it is because of castings from the nightcrawlers. There are a fewgood ways to catch them.
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>>1) Make two brass rods about 3' long with one sharpened to a point and a the other pushed into a hole drilled into a six inch long dowel about 1 1/2" in diameter. Take a 50' power cord with a plug on one end and aligator clamps on the other. Attch an aligator clamp to each of the rods and push them into ground that's been watered over night, about 3' feet apart. Stand back and plug the power cord into a 120v outlet. Watch for about 3 minutes. If there are big nightcrawlers in the soil they will quickly rise to the surface and become free of their holes. DON'T pick them up until you unplug the power cord! Don't forget to use the rubber gloves to keep your scent off of them!
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>>2) A safer but less effective method is to take a 5' broom handle and sharpen one end to a long tapered point. About 3' from the sharp tip cut a series of notches 1/4" wide by 1/8" deep, or there abouts. Take a second small rod, a dowl about 1/2" in diameter and 1' long. Push the broom handle into a watered soil where nightcrawlers are suspected of living, and then run the short dowel up and down the broom handle over the area with the series of notches. The sound produced radiates through the ground and scares the nightcrawlers to the surface, but they usually keep their tail into the hole so you have to be quick.
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>>3) Around 10pm, after a good rain, nightcrawlers come to the surface for some reason, I guess to get a moontan, and if you use a flashlight you can see them glistening in the beam. Be quick, they are!
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>hehe...I thought this could be a difficult step. At a minimum, it is pretty involved.
>
>I'm still not convinced we have nightcrawlers around here. I've never heard of anyone seeing or catching them here...I am going to have to do some investigation on this. My 8 year old son would get a huge kick out of this, even if the crawlers never ended up on a hook (which is the nightcrawler fate I would prefer).
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>Thanks for divulging!

No problem... share the joy!
Before Nebraska Game and Parks started charging $15/day to get access to the "public" lakes, on top of the fishing license fee, I was looking into growing my own nightcrawlers. Turns out it is pretty easy. You can buy worm bedding and a couple dozen starter worms. They are bi-sexual so reproduction is no problem. Toss them your garbage (grind it a bit in the blender to make it 'bit-size' for them!) or feed them commerical worm food. After you harvest them the left over bedding, just chock full of castings, makes EXCELLENT gargen fertilizer.