The Baits & Flavours Column

He is affectionately known as Dave the Flave due to his love affair with baits and flavours and is a self-confessed flavour junky.

THE HUMBLE WORM – PART 3

Dendrobeana – The New Champion?

Think back to when the redworm and lobworm ruled theneighbourhood, how every weekly and monthly fishing publicationcarried articles on the merits of these worms and how to use them.Then came a new kid on the block, the Dendrobeana, a new addition tothe angler’s armoury and one that didn’t really use the side door butburst in centre stage.

Match anglers around the country suddenly were singing the praiseof the denrobeana, pleasure anglers were finding them in the tackleshop and giving them a go with good results and even major specialistanglers were using them along with their boilies.

Now when you pick up a fishing magazine, the dominance of thedenrobeana is plain to see.

Is the dendrobeana really that good? Does it deserve all theacclaim it has received?

Dendrobeana Facts

The dendrobeana is in fact a large redworm that has two mainfunctions in its life and that is to eat and breed (what a life!). Itis also a very active worm and can, to a certain extent, survive abit of rough treatment.

It is these abilities that have brought the dendrobeana to theforefront with hundreds of tons of them being shipped all around theworld for land reclamation purposes (once they get established adendrobeana can easily eat half its bodyweight every day!). With thislevel of popularity in horticultural circles it was only a matter oftime before they were spotted and added to the anglers itinerary.

From the anglers point of view the dendrobeana has many meritsthat have now made it the first choice in the baitbox for many.

It is a very durable worm that is fairly easy to keep, even longterm, it can prove irresistible to fish whatever the age or growthstage of the worm. From the small canal size of the juvenile to thenear lobworm proportions of the adult that can grow to around 6″ thedendrabeana can still give that all enticing wiggle in even thecoldest of conditions when other worms have long since given up theghost and become lethargic.

Keeping Dendrobeanas

Bedding

We won’t go too in depth on this as it was mentioned in theprevious section on redworms in detail. Suffice to say that thedendrobeana will thrive and breed quite happily in the 50/50 manureand peat mix. Just remember to check the moisture content regularlyusing the ‘white knuckle’ method.

But a word of warning! Make sure you keep a lid on them, asdendra’s are very adept at going vertical in containers if there isany moisture on the sides.

If you intend to keep your dendrobeana worms in the recommended50/50 manure and peat mix then really there is little worry on thefeeding front, as they will devour this with great relish. The otheroption for both bedding and feed is the 50/50 corrugated cardboardand peat mix (both mentioned in detail in the previous redwormarticle).

If you are keeping your worms short term and have opted for just apure peat mix then to give them a treat put a Satsuma size ball ofmashed potato on the top of the mix every now and again – they loveit!

If you use a lot of worms, especially for chopping, then it isbest to locate a good bulk supplier (not mentioning any names, but MrWriggles is at your service. Just click the logo at the bottom of thepage 🙂 and keep them as described above to ensure a constant supply.This often works out quite a lot cheaper than buying per pot and ifthey do breed then it’s a bonus.

You will soon know when the bedding needs changing as it willbecome fine in texture, this will mean the worms have digested allthe goodness from it and will no longer be able to feed on it.

Now this is where you can score serious brownie points with theother half! Once the worms have digested the mix it is then pure’worm cast’ Not only is it a perfect plant fertilizer but it is alsovery expensive to buy from horticultural outlets, so there you go;the perfect excuse to have worm boxes stacked in the shed or garage.In times of strife you can come up with the perfect ” I did this asmuch for you as for myself, dear”.

Just mix the worm cast in with a bit of peat and either dig it inthe borders or turn your pot plants into triffids! A word of warningthough, you could lose any advantages gained so far by producing theworm cast for the boss if they then use it to pot up indoor plantsand it hasn’t had the eggs removed first, I think you get the idea,central heated houses make perfect hatcheries!

The ‘Worms Down’ Method

Right points scored, back to the worms, if you are keeping theworms in either buckets or storage boxes the best way I have found isto use the ‘worms down’ method.

This is a really easy way of separating the majority of your wormsfrom the bedding, especially if you are putting the worm cast ontoyour garden and don’t mind some eggs and any extra worms going inwith it to further improve the soil.

All you need is a good sized tray with raised sides or a boardwith some 1″ roof baton glued or nailed to it, a bright desk lamp anda bucket.

This method works on the worms intense dislike for bright light,simply tip the contents of the bucket or box into the middle of theboard and direct the light onto the heap. After around 15 minutes tohalf an hour you can start to remove the compost in layers, pickingany stragglers out if you want to, until you get to the bottom layer.Each time you remove a layer the worms will work themselves furtherdown until you have removed almost all the mix and you are left witha mass ball of worms ready to be transferred to their newbedding.

If you want to remove some of the eggs to provide new stock theyare relatively easy to spot in the rich dark mix, they are smallballs around 3/16″. They start off a light greenish colour and darkento a dark red colour just before hatching. You can put these in thenew bedding with the worms as they will shortly hatch and add to thenumbers. But DO NOT touch the eggs with your fingers as the naturaloils present in your hands will kill the egg.

Uses And Methods

Everywhere you look or read someone is talking about theproperties of chopped worm.

Certainly not a method for the faint hearted or squeamish, choppedworm is a devastating approach on any water and everything seems tolove it too! So it is worth the effort – honest.

At least now there are tools available from tackle shops that makepreparing chopped worm quicker. These are either in the form ofchoppie scissors or rollers, basically these are either two or threepairs of scissors bolted together or two or more pizza cutter typediscs with a handle. If you decide on the roller cutter type then gofor the ones with the larger wheels as some of the smaller ones areprone to clogging and then you have to pick the squidgy bits out!

If you want to get the best from this method pick up any magazineand there will be all the information you need for this devastatingfeeding method whether you are a match, pleasure or specialistangler. Only this month I was browsing one of the weeklies and foundan article showing how one angler was using a mix of chopped boilies,groundbait, maggots and chopped worm that was out-fishing all othermethods on the water. Everything is mixed together with a goodhelping of groundbait, this ingredients absorbs all the water andwater based juices in the worms allowing it to be put into a PVA bagto create a mighty fish pulling parcel.

In my opinion the advent of the PVA bag is as important to fishingas the hair rig and the boilie. It has given us the perfect way topresent a tight group of free offerings around our baits in a way notpreviously possible.

I have been playing with various ‘wet’ baits for a while now,prepared in a similar way and placed in a PVA bag ready for my earlytench campaign including cockles dusted with fishmeal but reading theworm article in the weekly has opened up even more possibilities, thetench won’t know what hit them.

The Popped Up Dendra Rig

Being a great believer in the effectiveness of a popped up worm itwasn’t long before I started to play around with a few ideas thatwould allow me to use dendrobeana’s in the same way as I do withlobworms. The build of the dendrobeana doesn’t really lend itself tobeing injected with air as it is a rather slim worm, although I havedone this on various occasions to create a near neutral bait in thesame way that carp anglers use to make the bait lift easily into thefishes mouth with little effort and it has worked with great effect.It is not an easy thing to do due to the size of the worm and thefact that it rarely keeps still ,so I wouldn’t really advise peopleto do it and this is why I wanted an easier alternative.

As with most things fishing my idea was not a new one, just anadaptation from a rig I’d seen in a magazine. This is one of thethings I love about fishing, it never goes stale. One day someonecomes up with either a new rig or a bait idea and immediately peopleall over can suddenly see a way that it could be of use to themeither in its original form or modified. These various modificationsthen set off another chain reaction and so it goes once again. It wasthis way that I came up with my own version that has accounted for alot of good fish on many different waters.

Once you have the rig set up, drop it in the margins and take alook at the continuous almost frenzied wriggling mass that is sittinga couple of inches (depending on the bed as to how high you set it)off the bottom swaying back and forth purely due to the dendrobeana’smovement and you will quickly see why it can be so effective.

The Medusa Worm Rig

Many of you may already know of the Medusa Rig used by a lot ofcarp anglers when they need that extra bit of attraction to theirboilies. It involves the use of a pop-up boilie threaded onto thehair and then, using a fine baiting needle, put two or threedendrobeana. Well I basically just did away with the boilie and addeda piece of foam instead, I also cut a sliver of foam that goes on thehair after the last worm as I feel it helps act as a cushion on thecast to help prevent the worms being ripped off.

I tend to tie my worm rigs using Ashima Poltergeist in either 6lbor 8lb breaking strains with the finished rig being around 8 to 10inches long to allow for the varying heights of the pop-up, but anybasic hair rig will do tied with either a size 10 or a size 8 if youare using a bunch of worms. The rig is then counter-balanced usingshot or putty to just pin it to the bottom.

As Graham will tell you I am a self-confessed flavour junkie andnever miss the opportunity to give one a go and this rig lends itselfvery well to being flavoured. A simple dunk before casting willensure the foam takes on a small amount of the flavour to be releasedslowly into the swim. My personal favourites are either HalesLuncheon Meat, Ace Worm Attract (when you can get it) and HalesSpice.

The recent introduction of various artificial pop-up baits meansthis rig can be fished to an even greater extent with any of the newbaits, then topped off with the ever wriggling, all enticingdendrobeana. Give it a go and see for yourself.

To sum up, I was one of the hardened lobworm users that felt thelobworm was truly king of the hill until I gave the dendrabeana a go.With its durability and versatility it soon proved itself to me andis a regular addition to my box, whenever I am doing any wormfishing.

I am by no means knocking the lobworm as I feel they bothcompliment each other perfectly. Often I will loose feed choppeddendra’s and fish a lob on the hook with excellent results,especially when I am hunting the perch and tench.

Next time we’ll take a look at the bigboy of the bait box – the lobworm, until then good fishing and keepthe worms going in and the fish will keep coming out!