It may not cover the car payment, but picking your own crawlers will save you a few bucks, keep you in bait, and can actually be kind of fun. First, find a likely spot. Lawns, gardens, golf courses, or parks where the soil gets regularly irrigated by rain, sprinklers, or garden hoses are good places to start. Vegetable gardens are great because there's little ground cover to hide the worms when they come out.
Crawlers emerge from spring through fall on cool, damp nights.
They come partially or completely out of their underground tunnels to feed, or because their burrows have been flooded by rain. It doesn't have to rain hard for you to find nightcrawlers, but you'll generally find more and the picking will be easier if it does. On the other hand, they rarely show themselves when the ground is dry or when nighttime temperatures rise above 70 degrees. Although crawlers lack eyes and ears, they are sensitive to light and vibrations. Occasionally they'll come entirely out of their holes, in which case they are perfectly helpless.