A worm or larva, particularly a caddisfly larva, used as bait for fishing.
Compound word from 'cad' (a dialectal or archaic term for caddis, the larva) + 'bait' (food used to attract fish). This is primarily a British fishing term that dates back several centuries, combining practical fishing vocabulary with precise identification of useful bait organisms.
Caddisfly larvae are engineering marvels—they build tiny protective tubes from sand, twigs, and stones before they hatch into flying insects. This makes them perfect bait and accidentally perfect indicators of clean water: fishermen learned that if caddisflies thrived in a stream, the water was healthy, turning a fishing worm into an environmental indicator.
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