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Posted in Fishing Worms Marine Worms Worms Generally

Dark, Small Worms Found in Minnesota Lake Pose Concerns for Residents About Invasive Species

“When I came out of our northern Minnesota lake in early October (cooling off on a warm fall day), my legs and swim trunks were covered in over 100 small dark brown to black larvae/worms”, writes this reader to us in his submission. “My guess is that they detached from the weeds that I had walked through and floated onto my legs. It is a deep (50 ft) soft bottom lake. Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera to take any photos. I saw an article on midge fly larvae but none of these were lighter-colored (all very dark) and they were all about 3 mm (0.1-inches) in length and 1mm (0.04-inches) in diameter? I would not call them slender. They didn’t fall off easily but I was able to brush them off. My neighbors say they have never seen this before and we had multiple new (to our lake) watercraft put in at our shore this summer so my main interest/concern would be whether this might be some sort of invasive species.”