one time we were fishing in a spot, everyone was using bits of nightcrawler, and no one was catching anything. my friend and i had red worms, and everywhere we would cast we would nail a nice one. it was great. we wouldnt tell anyone else what we were using for bait either; mostly because they were all being jerks. on guy was nice to us, so when we left we gave him our bait that was left over and he started to slay them! it was great. sometimes they will bite a bare hook, other times, they can be so finicky.