jimintoronto
Well-known Member
Patti. Here in Ontario the worm harvesting business is a huge industry, with dozens of picker crews going out nightly to pick night crawlers on golf courses. The golf courses charge the picker crews so much per night, for the right to pick there. The picking season starts in the first weeks of May and goes through to October. The main market for Canadian worms is in the US southern states, where they can fish most of the year round.
During the picking season, full tractor loads of worms head out every day going to the US destinations, the bait shops and piers where fishermen buy them for their large size and active movements. Believe it or not, the US Customs officers require a vet certificate for each truck load of Canadian worms, because they are live animals. The vet certificate says that none of the worms are from any other country, except Canada.
The pickers get a cash price for each one thousand worms they pick, paid by the crew leader, who in turn sells the worms to the exporter company , usually in the Toronto area, who in turn sell the worms by the truck load to US wholesalers, who sell them to the individual bait shops in the southern States. Every body makes a cut on the crawlers as they move along the supply chain. A dozen fresh night crawlers at a bait store in Toronto cost $3 or so. JIM.
