We do pretty much the same thing here for night crawlers.....wait till after a heavy rain, then go for a walk with a flashlight. They come out on the edge of the sidewalk (sometimes you get lucky and they are crawling across the cement), and you grab them and hold on! When they finally relax, they slide right out of the hole. Then we bring 'em home and put them in a styrofoam box filled with leaf litter and soil; feed them potato & carrot peelings and keep a moist cloth on the top so they don't dry out.
Reminds me of an old joke....two fellows meet on the street. One says to the other "Going fishing?" The second replies "Yep!"....the first one says "Yah got worms?" and the second says "Yep.....but I'm going fishin' anyhow!"
