How to Bait a Hook with a Live Worm

You would be hard pressed to find a human being on this planet that doesn't realize that one of the most effective baits that can be used when freshwater fishing is a live worm. Live worms such as red worms, leaf worms, night crawlers and mini night crawlers are such a popular and effective bait that they can be purchased in convenience stores throughout many sections of the United States and Canada. I know this because live worms have been a favorite choice of mine when it comes to fishing bait for the better part of three decades and below I will outline how to bait a hook with a live worm so that you can experience more success on the water.

Now, I'm not a complete idiot and realize that that putting a worm on a hook isn't rocket science or in some way a subject that is overly complex. But what I also understand is that the vast majority of fishermen that I have come in contact with over the years go about the act of baiting a hook with a worm in a way that is not anywhere near as effective as it should be. Which brings me to the reason that I am writing this article, I feel that everyone should know how to bait a hook with a live worm in the most effective and efficient way possible.

More than twenty years ago I was introduced to the unique concept of how to bait a hook with a worm by my best friends father, a man who was well known throughout the area where we grew up as being an expert fisherman. Although this man had experience with many fishing techniques and methods, his favorite was drift fishing for trout and smallmouth bass in the rivers and streams of Central Pennsylvania where we lived at the time.

The first time that I went fishing with this man and his son, he showed me something that he called "a set of gang hooks". These fishing hooks seemed strange to me, two small hooks tied back to back, but when I saw how he used them it all made sense. "Of course!", I thought to myself. "Now this is how to bait a hook with a worm". I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen or thought about this before. The concept was so simple, yet I had never seen it.

Rather than using a larger single fishing hook like so many anglers do, and trying to "thread" your worm onto said hook or threading the body of the worm onto a single fishing hook as I was known to do, with a set of gang hooks the worm could be hooked just once with each hook. This made the worm appear completely natural rather than like some sort of worm ball. These hooks were perfect when using red worms as bait (as we liked to do) and when larger night crawlers were used, I simply pinched the worm in half so that not too much of the worm was hanging free of of the second fishing hook.

I quickly learned that this method was without a doubt how to bait a hook with a worm and I have been using these unique fishing hooks ever since. The worm appears more natural to rthe fish that you are fishing for and are therefore more effective than the manner of hooking a worm that I had previously been using. The funny thing is that virtually everyone that I introduce to this way of hooking a worm for fishing has a reaction similar to the one that I had all of those years ago.