The Worm Has Turned--Green

The fashion news in fish bait this season is color. Living, wiggling color.

When it comes to worms, brown is out. Day-Glo chartreuse, red and blue are in.

Designer squirmers, created in Canada, made their debut in Ventura County last week. Anglers have tried them at Lake Piru and Lake Casitas, and although fish in Lake Piru don't seem impressed, some bait shops on the road to Lake Casitas are doing a brisk business.

"From the first time I saw them, I knew they were going to be popular," said Al Buczkowski, owner of the Oak View Shell gas station. "We just got them in and my shipment's almost gone."

Down the road at Casitas Market, only a few fishermen have bought the worms, so clerks there are taking a wait-and-see attitude. Birds at Lake Casitas clearly prefer mealworms--which many fishermen buy just to feed to ducks and nesting grackles--but Randy King, manager of the marina at Lake Casitas, said fish have always preferred the Canadian night crawler--the earthworm's pencil-length big brother--which is the worm that now comes in colors.

Nationwide, the newcomers are gaining in popularity, especially the green variety, which glow in the dark. At this year's Pro Michigan fishing series near Detroit, angler Paul Weller used one to hook a record 11.5-pound walleye.

It's the color and the pungent odor that attract fish, said John Kelley, a worm wholesaler in Guadalupe, near Santa Maria, who sells them to retailers in Ventura County. Thirty feet underwater, the wigglers glow through the murk, and some fish--which are drawn to color, light and smell--find them irresistible.

These worms are made, not born. Made in Canada. Paul Giannaris, 34, of Toronto, stopped his PhD work in organic chemistry to become a worm distributor after his father died in 1994. He took over the family business of selling Canadian night crawlers to bait companies in the States.

But give a chemist a warehouse full of giant worms and he's bound to experiment. Giannaris found that whatever crawlers eat is absorbed into every cell in their slimy bodies. Simply put, they are what they eat.

He asked fishing lure companies which colors and scents sell best. Day-Glo green and garlic, he was told.

Armed with that knowledge, Giannaris set out to build a better worm. After four years of food dye experiments and, sadly, the deaths of thousands of crawlers, he created "Nitro Worms" in the perfect Day-Glo green and garlic. He dyed worms red and blue too, just because he could.