Brady Knowlton with friends—at an undisclosed location—with a 60-pound catfish he caught by hand.
Posted on 05/16/2011 7:54:28 PM PDT by Palter
State Noodles With Decriminalizing Fish-Grabbing; Watch Out for the Tail
Brady Knowlton believes it's his inalienable right as a Texan to shove his bare hand into the mouth of a 60-pound catfish and yank it out of a river.
But wrestling a flapping, whiskered giant as it latches onto your arm with its jaws isn't among Texas's accepted methods of capturing fish. It is, rather, a class C misdemeanor, with fines of up to $500.
So Mr. Knowlton, a 30-year-old-private citizen, oilman and outdoor enthusiast here, is pushing a bill in the state Legislature to legalize hand fishing, also known as noodling, grabbing or hogging. Noodlers go into the water, then reach into holes, hollow tree trunks and other underwater nooks to find the fish.
Nothing beats "the heebie-jeebies you get underwater, in the dark, with this little sea monster biting you," he says. He recalls that his arm looked like "the first stage of a chili recipe" after his first noodling experience about 15 years ago. Catfish are equipped with bands of small but very abrasive teeth.
The bill swam easily through the state house, but now rod-and-reel anglers are speaking up against the proposed law, currently in the state Senate.
They say noodling is unfair to the fish, since they're grabbed in their burrows without a chance to swim away.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Come up to OK. Noodling is legal here.
Now that pic is really funny.
Some of them requalified Airborne after losing a lower leg during the war.
Big Brass ones. This former zoomie is respectful of that.
/johnny
It boggles the mind that noodling is illegal... But hey, this is America, we have never met a law or restriction we wouldn’t vote for...
“This land of liberty, to thee I sing”... Whatever.
I wonder what the statistics are for noodlers encountering large turtles and water moccasins?
Aw, freep. Noodling is its own punishment, and giant catfish are no benefit to a well-managed fisheries department. They’ll eat your leg off, them and the 6-foot-diameter snapping turtles.
I have a picture of my great-uncle, 80 years old, with a 75-pound yellow cat that he caught on a little sunfish rig. The thing looked like it could eat him!
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
I went catfish grabbing ... once!
When I was five years old I went hogging with my big brother and another guy. My brother and the other guy were actually out in shallow water catching fish by hand. I was reaching under the bank. Years later I wondered what I would have done had I grabbed a snake.
Unless specifically made legal, everything is illegal.
I made the comment that the pic was funny in an earlier post. I’ll qualify my comment. My grandfather was a noodler complete with scarred arms. He was also an below the knee amputee. As a youngster he always told me he lost his leg while noodling. Little did I know at the time he was a WW-2 vet and had lost his leg during the war. I meant no disrespect but flashbacks of my early days with grand dad just made me chuckle. I do have a photo of “Cotton” (grand dad) with a catfish he caught noodling...110 pounds and a whole 40 pounder that had just been swallowed by the big cat.
Something I wonder about is the fins. You can get stabbed!
Yep. I knew it was legal in OK. Lived there for 7 years.
It may not be legal in Texas now, but it was common year ago.
Not sure when it became illegal.
I have a fishing problem. New one. I got a minnow trap a couple days ago, like this:
Since minnows are $20/lb, if you do the math, but I have 30lb carp that have learned to undo this trap which I bait with some nice snacks. The perch have taught the carp to stick their head into the minnow intake openings, and the carp just suction up all the bait inside the minnow trap.
The shiners can't get an word in edgewise in the meantime. Do I need to buy another trap for the carp to bang around at night at the dock? So the minnows can swim in unharrassed?
Was the 40 pounder fresh enough for the catch to count as a two'fer?
What I caught was a thirty pounder, which meant I put my arm down its’ mouth and out the gill in order to hold on to it.
Worse thing was it kept me down under the muddy water and I didn’t know which way was up at times. We were fishing in an overflow area of a lake filled with bushes and trees in fifteen feet of water. The guys I was “fishing” with had made wooden boxes tied them to the trees and sunked them about two-three feet deep. It was a strugge swimmning back to the boat with a big catfish on your arm. My hand and arm looked like I been switched with a sticker bush for hours.
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