Pat’s Wildways: Sopchoppy Worm Grunting Festival

It makes me laugh just to say it: Sopchoppy Worm Grunting Festival. And it has made all our friends and acquaintances do a double-take when we mention that we are going there. We’ve had a lot of fun with this name, but what would it actually be like? I guess we found out.

Recently, Bucko and I spent a couple of nights in St. Marks, Florida, in the closest lodging we could find with availability near the one-day festival. Early on the Saturday of the festival, we drove the 20 minutes to Sopchoppy in order to get there in time for the demonstration that preceded the kids’ worm-grunting event. We didn’t want to miss anything! I persuaded the organizers that I was covering this for a story for the Fernandina Observer, and managed to gain access inside the roped-off worm-grunting grounds, the city’s Depot Park, to get unobstructed photos when the grunting began.

So what is worm grunting anyway? Well, now you will know. Apparently, certain sounds (similar to the sounds moles make, we were told) drive worms to the surface where they can be collected for use, mostly as fish bait. It’s a North Florida thing, but similar techniques are used in Europe and elsewhere. And I learned from my old, dearly departed professor, Jack Kaufmann, that box turtles in Pennsylvania do the same thing by stomping on the ground. Amazing. What an experience to witness this firsthand — I was jazzed!

As the morning’s events unfolded, we first watched a worm-grunting demonstration by the “legends” of worm-grunting — men who had been featured in various televised programs over the years and who were obviously recognized by the surrounding crowd, who cheered their arrival. The two men rubbed metal paddles across wooden stakes sunk in the ground, making sounds more like a bullfrog than what I imagine a mole sounds like, but what do I know? After a couple of minutes of this unsettling croaking, sure enough, the first worm surfaced. See video:

And then the real fun began. Kids and their parents had been lining up for a couple of hours in order to claim one of the 35 spots in the field for them to try it themselves. Each kid chose their metal paddles and wooden stakes from a box at the entrance, and then they were off, finding a spot in the grass and making their own bullfrog sounds in the ground. Most worked in pairs: one child worked the devices, the other spotted for worms coming up nearby. It was fantastic fun for one and all, and more fun than any old egg hunt on the lawn. This took skill!

I tried to be unobtrusive to the real press filming stories for ABC News and other outlets — lots of press were there too. I got on the field and watched the action firsthand. One little girl took a shine to me, and happily showed me her cup of worms whenever she added a new one. But she said in a 3-year-old-tiny voice, “One is broken.” I looked into her cup and sure enough, one was bloody. To her mother, I said, “It will be more broken than this when it goes fishing.” The mother laughed, but luckily the little girl was oblivious ...

On our way back to Fernandina the next day, we took a longer route home primarily to visit our friends at Chiappini’s gas station and bait store in Melrose, where we have chatted for years, getting the local scoop on things. (Here’s a previous column that tells more about the place.) As luck would have it, Robin was busy selling bait to patrons that morning. And what kind of bait? Worms! Perfect!

It turns out that they sell three different kinds of worms: earthworms, wigglers and grunts! Yes, grunt worms! Robin knew all about them. In fact, he used to grunt for worms himself right in Melrose, to get his own bait for fishing. Earthworms, he said, often originate from several producers in Ottawa, Canada, a worm capital in its own right. And I’m not sure of the origin of the wigglers. Heck, I never even knew you could buy three different kinds of worms for fishing!

Attending the Sopchoppy Worm Grunting Festival was lots of fun, educational, and a must-do experience for those with an inquisitive mind. Another bucket list item for us attained. But once is enough — been there, done that!

Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D., is a zoologist on Amelia Island. She welcomes your nature questions and observations. patandbucko@yahoo.com