Digging and Collecting Lugworm for fishing bait

Lugworm is a much favoured bait for sea fishing which with a bit of planning can be collected easily and its well worth the effort. There are two main types for fishing, blow lugworm and black lugworm. Lug will catch almost all UK sea species

The Lugworm lives in the inter tidal area of beaches and more commonly estuaries. They live in a U shaped burrow, one end is open (the head end) and the other has a CAST which is a coil of sand created by the creature burrowing and digesting the substrate, drawing out the goodness it may contain.

At high water the head end of the lugworm will be towards the open end of the burrow and as the water level goes down so the lugworm will get lower in the burrow until it is at the very bottom. The lugworm uses the hairs on the side of its body, combined with pulsing waves through it body to move in the burrow.

Lugworm stay in their burrows and do not move until breeding in autumn, when it will make a new burrow and release its eggs or sperm into the water where they fertilize. Young lugworms then hatch and create their own burrows generally higher up the tide line moving down as they mature.

I find the best way of collecting lugworm is to find a cast and open hole, normally 6 – 9 inches apart, dig out one spade of substrate 3 inches in front of an imaginary line between the two points, then another spade full a spades length back, so now you have a hole two spades long, then take another spade full out in the middle of the hole you have created, this should include that imaginary line between the 2 points you started from, but this time you are about 6 -8 inches down in the substrate. This spade full should hold the worm and if you break it up you should find it. There is another method called trenching where you simply dig a trench which runs about 2 spades deep through a collection of casts and open holes. This method is best in areas where there are lots of lugworm casts and the collection rate should be high.

Some collectors prefer using a fork; it depends upon the type of substrate. Where you have thicker mud rather than sand its easier with a fork. There is another method using a bait pump to collect lugworms, I have never used this method to collect Lugworm, so until I have I will not mention it here. If you use a bait pump please feel free to submit an article or write a comment onto this post.

Place the collected lugworms in a bucket and add a bit of seaweed to keep them damp. To keep them for a while keep them cool, wrapped in newspaper and in the fridge is the best place for them. Lugworm can be frozen, some people recommend gutting them by squeezing them and wrapping them individually or salting them for a few hours, then wrapping individually and freezing them.