I don't know if this is good news or bad news...

But Hybrid Striped Bass are very likely to hit the nightcrawler. The bigger the piece of crawler the more likely it is to get hit. I don't think there is any fish that will swallow the crawler more quickly. That's why I don't like to use this method when there is any breeze at all. When it's windy you can easily lose contact with the presentation and that's when the problems can happen. If you were to gut hook a HSB you could just immediately cut the hook off and hope for the best. I've fished with several friends who wanted to use this method and watched them bring in a gut hooked HSB. It's still just a fish to me, but it's kinda hard to watch.

Holding a redear sunfish is like running with scissors.