By Deborah DeSilets
Whether you call it worm charming, worm grunting, worm fiddling or by any other local name the results are the same: attracting earthworms from the ground. Why do people do this? Well, to collect the choicest, freshest, and greatest bait for fishing! In the Florida Panhandle, the historic small town of Sopchoppy takes one day a year to celebrate Worm Grunting. And it’s become a beloved community wide entertainment. In other places, like Texas, it is a competitive sport. It is true that today the skill and profession of worm charming is very rare, so making it a family tradition that is worth sharing. Recently featured on the Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” with Mike Rowe where it was shown how it is done in Sopchoppy: “Worm grunting involves vibrating the soil. This makes the worms crawl up to the surface because they think the sound is made by moles digging in the soil to have a worm snack.”
Some forty five minutes outside of Tallahassee, at the eastern edge of the Apalachicola National Forest, The Sopchoppy Worm Grunting Festival is held in a quaint small town of the same name. Since 2000, this one day community extravaganza, held on the second Saturday in April, allow the local worm grunting champions, like Greg Revell to demonstrate in the early morning (9:00 am) how to raise up the worms.
Other entertainments are provided as well and under the umbrella of ancient oaks artisans gather and sell their one-of-a-kind wares. In years past you could hear the bantering of folks drift in the cool spring winds that float words like wild flowers: “lavender soap here “, “rain needed for planting” here. This year expect the same experience as in some places time does seem to stand still or at least moves calmly enough for the dust to settle and the sun to make you lazy. Hear old Florida, where the woods speak of a timely magic and the worms come a running to the tune of the grunt.
For generations people living around the Apalachicola National Forest have collected earthworms using a mysterious technique called “worm grunting.” To read about it, it seems easy enough, “Worm grunting involves driving a stake into the ground and repetitively rubbing a steel file across the top of the stake. Vibrations created in the process mimic the sound made by hungry moles and drive earthworms to the surface of the ground.” But ask a man from Telogia, Florida about worm grunting and he’ll smile really broad and as his eyes dance while he describes, “using a tomato stick and a steel blade from a lawnmower” perhaps his special choice of metal where others “would use a tomato stake and a steel bar; but that’s the fun of the grunt- your metal, your sound, your catch.” As he describes it, his will sing if you would just “… hit that tomato stick into the ground a few inches, then rub the steel lawnmower blade on the broad tip until the stick scraps a grunting sound out of the blade! Do this repeatedly and then just watch the worms rise out of the ground: Sometimes thousands!” He assures me this is not just for fun, but many a man in the woods can make a living this way; “ You get five cents five cents for each worm selling to the bait shops. And with a glint in his eye says, “That you can sell every one of ’em! These are the best fishing worms you’ll find. I know men that have made fortunes on worms.”
So just what do creepy, crawly worms that make excellent fish bait, do? Well, don’t hurry to go dig them all up for fishing; earthworms also enrich your garden soil by dramatically altering soil structure. The term “worm” means different things in different contexts. Worms help to increase the amount of air and water that gets into the soil. They break down organic matter, like leaves and grass into things that plants can use. When they eat, they leave behind castings that are a very valuable type of fertilizer.
These “castings” or “worm -poop” place nutrients in the soil around them. And at death, the body of a worm decomposes and enriches the soil.
It is the night crawlers,that are frequently gathered by fisherman for use as bait; at night they move their bodies through the soil; aerate the soil and convert dead matter into fertilizer; and witha life expectancies of 10 to 15 years these worms—so essential to the health of your garden soil— makes them “more productive in the garden than at the end of a fishhook.”During its lifetime the worms’ natural activity of breaking down organic material and food scraps into rich food for garden plants adds nutrients to your soil for making your food.
Its fun learning more about earth worms and at the Sopchoppy Worm Grunting Festival, there’s neither another place, nor festival, quite like this in the world!
