Spare a thought for the worm

Fishing on the Great Barrier Reef is second to none. Again it's personal choice but I like Red Emperor and Coral Trout the best. Nothing beats sitting on a creek or river bed with your line out , baited up, waiting for the elusive big one. You came prepared with insect repelant and ensure the tackle box has plentiful supplies of sinkers, traces, lures and not forgetting long shank double barbed hooks, my favourite. When it comes to bait, I would prefer to use dead prawns, pilchards, sardines and pieces of cut up squid. Am not a fan of threading a live worm or yabbie on a hook. It may sound ridiculous to many fisherpersons, but hey a common earthworm must have pain sensors, so I keep telling myself when they wriggle between the fingers.
Earthworms have a closed circulatory system. They have two main blood vessels that extend through the length of their body: a ventral blood vessel which leads the blood to the posterior end, and a dorsal blood vessel which leads to the anterior end. The dorsal vessel is contractile and pumps blood forward, where it is pumped into the ventral vessel by a series of "hearts" (aortic arches) which vary in number in the different taxa. A typical lumbricid will have 5 pairs of hearts; a total of 10. Worms are also hermaphrodites.
On numerous occasions the attempt to thread a worm on a gleaming sharp hook resulted in cringing and releasing the worm. Have no problem with scaling, gutting and filleting a fish but no longer can do the deed of cutting it's throat. If it was a matter of survival to do so then instinct would take over , alas fishing is just a favourite pastime at the moment.