Buy your mealworms early

[SkunkedAgain]

Randy are you using a whole meal worm?  If so tear them in half and kind of squish out some guts...

I never do that; however, I can see how that would work when fishing for panfish.  When fishing for trout I would suggest trying them whole and sometimes even go with two meal worms.

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It is just plain weird is all I can say. I have been pinching the heads off them. And I have tried them right side up and upside down. I just have no confidence at all with them, so they don't work with me.

I have always found it interesting how one angler will have great success with a particular rig or bait and another angler will have limited or no success fishing with the same rig or bait.  Confidence in a bait or rig sure seems to make a huge difference.

Kent, I guess I don't use them for trout much, I typically use those crappie nuggets when I fish for trout...  So you were right on the money with the panfish/bass prediction, also if I am down sizing and using the tungsten jigs I just use the half meal worm..  Trout also seem to like the wax worms better than the meal worms for me...  

Randy, I always take a full selection of bait with me if I can find it...  and I tend to use the spikes, waxies, meal, night crawlers, nuggets and cut bait.... I truly believe that the lure is just the bait delivery device, and they don't tend to matter as much as what you're feeding the fish on them...  If i have some of all the bait types, I'll rotate through them if I can't get a bite... But meal and nuggets tend to weather the cold better, so when the crawlers and waxies have frozen stiff I usually end up using the meal worms and nuggets the majority of the time, so I catch more fish on them than the rest... (cutbait is always good too)  Do you have an underwater camera?  After watching how the fish take the lures, I tend to believe that twitching at the right time will entice more hits than the prime rib of baits, but maybe it takes both??? I'm sure getting ready to hit the ice... Soon I hope... Later Jeff