If you’ve ever felt the urge to catch giant catfish with your bare hands — and who hasn’t? — then listen up. Kansas is about to open its first-ever season for hand fishing for flathead catfish, a practice commonly called “noodling.”
This is an old Midwest tradition in which fishermen search for holes in riverbanks or lake bottoms and then reach in and feel for lurking catfish, which bite down on their bare hands. Then you simply pull them out.
“If you’re not bleeding, you’re not noodling,” says one aficionado of the sport.
We’ll take his word for it.
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26 Comments
Well, ya’ gotta hand it to these guys! For them, fishing doesn’t involve that good old tradition of sitting in a boat getting sunburned, shitfaced and lied to all day, and capped off with a poker game and gin that lasts until it’s almost time to get up and do it all again.Personally, I find a nice shady spot on the bank, toss in a line and sinker sans hook and bait, and spend a day reading a good book. That way I don’t have to mess with (or clean) a string of run-off contaminated mutant frankenfish that might give my cats the gleep, I get a book or two read outside in the fresh hydrocarbons, and I avoid the twice-daily jackass asking what I could possibly be doing down there. Best of all possible worlds!
Sorry but for me this falls into the same category as the first person that ever stood behind a bull and said “Huh, now them look tasty!”. Just how drunk do you have to be before that sounds like a good idea?
The noodlers might ask the same question about people who sky-dive or bunge-jump – its just a different thrill.
This new noodling “sport” does bring up an interesting question.
What happens on a foggy summer morning when a 200 pound “noodler” in full camouflage regalia reaches his arm into the murky Cottonwood River near Cottonwood Falls and grabs a giant 100 pound flathead catfish snoozing on the mud bottom?
When the noodler attempts to jerk this ancient fighting mad siluriformes, survivor of many underwater battles, out of his natural habitat, the murky muddy languid Cottonwood River … does the giant catfish submit peacefully to the shock and awe of the moment? Or does he fight back to this invasion of his homeland? Does he see the noodler as one large worm, offered magically for his dinner?
Will the noodler disappear into that mysterious fisherman triangle hidden in the foggy Flint Hills of Chase County … leaving only a camouflage fisherman’s hat floating downstream?
Sounds like a good way to get bit. Brings to mind the old tale about the guy who reached into a hole to get a catfish and found a large snapping turtle instead.
I think I’ll keep my hands in my pockets where they belong, lol.
It’s not getting bit that concerns me, it’s getting gigged by those nasty pectoral fins that catfish have. Those things can slice you right open and leave a nasty infection.
To each their own but this has to be one of the stupidest sports I’ve seen.
I wonder if there are any women ‘noodlers’?
Just what Kansas needs. More rednecks in the lake pulling fish out with their bare hands. I guess that is better than sitting in a boat all day drinking beer. If you really want to catch fish, there are easier ways like using an eletrical generator to stun them or my favourite which is a 3 prong spear and a flashlight.
Yes actually there are women noodlers. I saw it on America’s Funniest Home Videos once.
There may not be very many devotees of this type of fishing – for obvious reasons – but why should it be illegal? Noodling will not be legal in ponds or lakes, and in most streams and rivers it won’t be legal either. It won’t be legal on the Cottonwood River, the Ninnescah, or the Smoky Hill. It will only be legal on the Kansas River, and on the Ark south of the John Mack Bridge in Wichita. And only flathead cats are legal.
Not my cup of tea (the walleye are biting, but I won’t tell where!!!) but to each his own, I guess.
Isn’t this why we have grocery stores?
If only flatheads are legal — what do you do if you get bit by the wrong kind of catfish?
You might have to kill it anyway to get it off your hand.
Noodling, which is also known as hogging, dogging, tickling, grappling and grabbling, is concentrated in the South and Midwest. Noodlers tend to live in rural areas, and many make their living in tactile jobs like construction trades. During the season some go fishing a dozen times, three or four hours each trip.
The sport’s roots can be traced to American Indians, who would sometimes hold red cloths in their hands for fish to bite, Professor Morgan said. During the Depression, the technique was used as a way to put food on the table. It has passed down through the generations ever since.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/travel/escapes/21noodle.html
Aside: the NYT is probably more accurately accused of condescension than of holding a liberal bias. The outcome is the same either way, but I think condescension is what really gets the Republicans and their sons/daughters who came over to the party thanks to Nixon and the “southern strategy.”
For instance: editors allowing a patronizing adjective like “tactile” through to print is just egregious. Tactile job my ass, it’s a construction job, lol.
This has to fall into the classification of “one man’s foolishness is another man’s sport.”
To each his own.
When I was about seven I was fishing on the banks of a lake, catching little bluegills and tossing them back, when I hooked a five pound cat. I managed to haul the creature in, but it scared the daylights out of me. I swear, the thing looked at me like it wanted to eat me.
You won’t find me sticking my arm in the water trying to noodle a catfish.
If you “grab” a flathead, you don’t injure it by grasping the lower jaw, so you just release it afterwards. This kind of fishing doesn’t involve hooks so there are no mortal wounds – to the fish. I agree that I wouldn’t stick my hands into holes underwater in snapper country.
Who wrote this topic anyway. And who hasn’t….
I hasn’t!
The Indians used a red cloth in their hands – now that makes more sense than just putting your whole arm down in some catfish’s mouth.
If this is mainly in the South and Midwest, then I understand it now.
Someone made a point of the snappers. Yeah!
PM,I get some monster snappers in my back yard on occasion. When I was about 10, I teased one with a broomstick, and it bit through that stick like it wasn’t there! Fingers, hands and arms could be gone just as easily.
Thanks, one and all for the education and information on something I had never heard about prior to this! Entertaining and maybe a little silly…sure is a pleasant read!!!
Thanks!
My “giant catfish” story above had more than a grain of truth to it. One Saturday morning I was having breakfast in that downtown cafe on the west side of main street (aka Broadway) in Cottonwood Falls, sometimes known as the Emma Chase cafe.
Suddenly a loud honking came from outside so we all rushed outside. A couple cowboy fishermen standing by an old multi-painted pickup said to look in their pickup bed.
Three giant catfish were lying there … still alive, trying to breathe but most likely slowly suffocating. Even so they glared at us as we stared at them. A little like Saddam Hussein cursing his final tormentors.
The cowboys said each catfish weighed more than 100 pounds and I believe it. They were giants, looked like small sharks.
I don’t remember now if those fishermen were going to dump them in a local farm pond … possibly so because they would be more valuable alive spawning more catfish than dead on an Emma Chase Cafe fish platter.
If those fish had shark’s teeth, I doubt if there would be many swimmers … left … in the nearby Cottonwood River!
Reminds me … I wonder if the Cottonwood River is flooding and running over the Cowboy Trail Road today just east of Elmdale?
OH I grew up where we had snappers. I remember once walking through the pasture down to the swimming hole. This one was so huge I thought it was a tortoise. It also looked dead. So I took a branch and the damn thing JUMPED into the air. Who knew that they could jump. I never ran so fast in all my life!
In the south they have alligator turtles, I’ve heard they have cause some amputations, with their mouths held open at the ready, for some unsuspecting noodler!
One day I went to my brother-in-law’s and there laying in his front yard was the severed head of a Snapper.I swear it would have measured nearly eight inches round! He got something like twenty five pounds of meat from the turtle. He had caught it out of the Walnut just outside of Augusta.
Yeah I had brought up the subject of noodling to him, he looked back at the head laying in the yard and then looked back at me. He did not comment on sticking his hand in a hole in a river bank…. Something’s just speak volumes with a word said. LoL
I’ve actually been noodling before, did it for years- my grandfather did it too (he was a crazy drunk bastard lol). I catch my catfish now with hook & line, as I’m too old, too fat and in too poor of health to fart around with noodling anymore.
Catfish don’t have ‘teeth’ per se, but they do have pretty damn strong jaws lined with razor sharp sandpapery pads. A big one clamping down on your fingers will, at the very least, bloody you up. I’ve come pretty close to having my left hand totally degloved (ie the skin stripped off)- that was in the ‘early days’ before I started wearing GLOVES lol.
The article doesn’t mention the other joys: the mosquitoes, the ticks, the blackflies, the sandflies, the deerflies, the leeches, the snakes, the rabid muskrats etc. Snapping turtles are especially evil.
For anyone who hasn’t noodled, this is the basic premise: big male catfish spawn in protected hollows, such as rocks & logs. They’re aggressive and will actively defend their nest against anything. You find a promising spot, and gingerly insert a hand (or foot)…it’s not so much a ’snatch & grab’ as it is a ‘tickle-feel’. But once you determine that it IS a catfish…once you let it bite you, oh man…hope you have some stamina, because those things are brutally strong!
The idea of having a “season” for noodling, though, is kind of stupid. I think a fishing license alone should be sufficient…