Noodling

About Noodling

Noodling is a southern US practice and sport of fishing for catfish using only one's bare hands. Catfisting, grabbling, graveling, hogging, dogging, tickling, and stumping are all possible names used in different regions for the same activity. Five U.S. states have laws explicitly permitting handfishing: Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Kansas. Missouri had an experimental noodling season in 2005 on sections of three rivers.

The term "noodling", although today used primarily towards the capture of flathead catfish, can and has been applied to all hand fishing methods, regardless of the method or species of fish sought. Noodling as a term has also been applied to various unconventional methods of fishing, such as any which do not use bait, rod & reel, speargun, etc., but this usage is much less common.

Although the concept, catching fish with only the use of the arm in the water, is simple enough, the process of noodling is more complicated. The choice of catfish as the prey is not arbitrary, but comes from the circumstances of their habitat. Flathead catfish live in holes or under brush in rivers and lakes and thus are easy to capture due to the static nature of their dwelling. To begin, a noodler goes underwater to depths ranging from only a few feet to up to twenty feet, placing his hand inside a discovered catfish hole. If all goes as planned, the catfish will swim forward and latch onto the fisherman's hand, usually as a defensive maneuver in order to try to escape the hole. If the fish is particularly large, the noodler can hook the head around its gills.