Stuff You Should Know - How Noodling Works

Episode Date: January 5, 2010

Noodling is a type of fishing in which the participant uses his or her hand in lieu of fishing gear and bait. Discover the origins and practices of this unusual "sport" in this episode of Stuff You Should Know. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can call me Rusty. Yeah, no doubt. Chuck, this is the first time in eight or nine years since we've done this. Weeks. Everyone should know. It feels like years.

This is the first one back from my elementary school Christmas vacation. Yeah. It's been weeks. Yeah, it's our first one in 2010, the future. Yes. And I told Josh I'm having re-entry problems like I always do. Yes. I like walk to my cube and everything looks strange and it was like being, it's like

the first day on the job. Yeah, he's constipated. Huh, yeah. A little bit, actually. Yeah, that's what happens when you stay away for too long and you wake up, sit up like a stiff as a board and you're like, I have to work today. And poop. And poop.

How was your good break? Yeah, it was great. Went to the Isle of Palms in Charleston for eight years. Oh, how was that? It was very nice. It was super cold, but it was nice. Right. Went to Drayton Hall.

Don't know what that is. It's the oldest intact preserved plantation of its kind on the eastern seaboard as far as I know. What's the difference between a farm and a plantation? The plants. I'm going to start 2010 with a fact. Plantations only grow one crop. Is that right?

That's what I'm told. I would have thought it had to do with the size or something. No. One crop. Farm many crops. Very nice. Is that, is farm Latin for many crops? I think so.

There's a good fact for Mr. Charles W. Chuck Ryan. I should quit while I'm ahead and just check out here. Yeah, we'll give you the email address so you can say, congrats Chuck. We'll give it to you at the end of this podcast, which happens to be on a little something called noodling. Yes. You may also know it as hogging, dogging, stumping. Hand fishing.

That's, that's, yeah. That's a popular one actually. That's what the city folk call it. Not actually, I was on the YouTubes and they were, all those dudes were calling it hand fishing. Have you ever done this? No. No.

Nor have I. And it doesn't seem like a sport that will ever become real popular because it's so thoroughly terrifying. Yes. Absolutely. I would never, ever do this. What we're talking about is, as Chuck said hand fishing, but it goes by all sorts of colloquial isms.

We called it noodling in this article on howstuffworks.com. And basically what it is, is you stick your hand into a underwater catfish nest, which they tend to nest underwater. And you're in the water. We should point out. You're not doing this from a boat. No. And you get the fish to bite your hand and you pull it out and there you've just fished.

You've just noodled. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's pretty much it. Of course, there's all sorts of other interesting stuff that surrounds this, which we will discuss at length starting now. Right. You know what it reminded me of?

What? Was, you saw the 80s Flash Gordon movie, right? Of course. No. Oh, come on. Sure you did. I didn't. You didn't see Flash Gordon?

No. With the Queen soundtrack and all that? No, definitely not. Wow. I mean, Dalton in one scene, they have this, it's like a test of courage where they reach into this, these different holes in this big like rock type thing. And there's a creature in there that will bite you if you stick your hand down the wrong hole.

Right. So they go down to the elbow and then of course one of the guys got tagged on the wrist and like green ooze oozed out his wrist. That's what reminded me of noodling. Did he perish? Oh yeah. Noodling reminds me of that sand monster in Return of the Jedi. Yes.

Except, you know, it's smaller. Not much. No. And actually noodling can be deadly. There's all sorts of peril that the sport is fraught with. Let's talk about the history of it first. Okay. Native American and its roots, evidently.

Yeah. Apparently the first time it appears in Western literature is in 1775. Really? This trader historian named James Adair was traveling the south and he said, yeah, the Native Americans have this weird thing where they get in the water and they actually apparently used like red cloth. Oh really? So like, you know, entice the fish.

Go like, toro, toro to the catfish and then yeah, but then they'd use their hands to pull them out. I imagine that the Native Americans would use kind of whatever means they could to get the fish out and this is one of them. Yeah. And since catfish are so huge, this was, you know, a prized catch. Yeah. Apparently they, like you said, there was all sorts of other methods used to fish among

the Native Americans, including clubbing them over the head, using spears, bows and arrows. Of course. And I think scaring them up with torches and then just grabbing them like as they came to the surface. Right. So yeah. No dynamite or rods and reels. Not yet.

Right. That occurred in the 19th century. And they also, actually in the article said that the Great Depression, clearly probably in the south, it was a good time to go noodling. Yeah. Because it's totally and completely free. You're using nothing but your hands. Your body.

And whatever gas it took to get your pickup truck to the noodling hole. Right. And that's about it. So yeah. And then interesting, I mean, like it, I guess it was still around. But then in the Great Depression, everybody's like, we need to start this up again. Right. And then it's passed down from father to son, although there are female noodlers.

Yeah. Much braver women than I am. What's that one girl's name, Misty McFarland? I don't know. Oh, I see. The champion. Yeah. She's pretty good.

She's a well-known noodler named Rusty McFarland, who's a plumber slash noodling philosopher. Yeah. He was in that documentary I watched. Yeah. I think he's a big one. He likened plumbing to noodling, actually. I'll bet.

And he even said the word turd. He did. I hate that word. It's awful. So Chuck. Yes, Josh. This is a, as you might imagine, a fairly rural activity. Yeah.

The rural south and then Oklahoma is a huge noodling state. Yeah. So is Missouri as well. Is it? Yeah. It's one of the biggest states as far as we know right now. Right. And that is up from just eight years ago.

Only four states allowed noodling. What, in 2001? Uh-huh. That's nine years ago now, buddy. Oh, that's right. Welcome to the future. Look at me. 20th century, man.

Yeah. So 13 states up from four. That's a big increase. Yeah. It's definitely gaining popularity, thanks in part to that documentary you vaguely referred to earlier. That's right. What's the filmmaker's name?

The filmmaker's name is Bradley Beasley. Nice. He, I believe, is called Oki Noodling, right? Yeah. And he really put it on the map. Not only did he put it on the map, he established the first noodling tournament for the documentary. Right. So he could get better shots or whatever.

Because as it says clearly in the documentary, there ain't no noodling tournaments because no one's taking the initiative. Nice. That's what one of the guys said. Well delivered. So Brad said, hey, you know, what a great way to end this documentary. I'll start my own noodling tournament. And that's exactly what he did.

And it's taken off from them, right? Oh, yeah. All right. So Chuck, we talked about just the generalities, stick your hand in a hole. A little history. Let's get a little more into it. Yeah. Why would a catfish bite onto your hand, Josh?

What's the reason? Well, actually, the reason is that what you're doing is you're reaching your hand into a catfish nest where there are thousands of eggs waiting to be hatched. Exactly. What I find interesting is you're not catching the female. The female comes and lays the eggs and then the male comes along, chases her off and takes over the duty of protecting the eggs. Yeah.

So that's what they're doing. You're actually catching males. They're guarding when they come after your hand and apparently how you noodle as you wiggle your fingers around to get their attention. Which may be the reason that it's called noodling is your fingers look like wet noodles. That's true. Yeah. Although no one is quite sure.

No, they're not. It remains a mystery. Right. So when you stick your hand in, the catfish goes to bite you and sometimes it'll nibble and you can kind of get a grasp on it. Sometimes it'll try to swallow your entire arm. Ideally. It sounds odd to say that, but I think that's what you're looking for.

Either way, once your hand makes entry into the catfish's maw, you wiggle it down as far as you can to the gills and hook the gills from the inside out. And then all of a sudden now you have a real firm grasp on that catfish. Right. Plus, when you have your hand in something's gills, it tends to really focus on that and freak out a little bit. Sure. Right?

Yeah. So then you pull it to the surface and there you have it. You've got your catfish. Right. Although as we said, this thing is kind of fraught with peril. Yeah, yeah. The first thing you're going to encounter is the teeth, right? Yeah.

They're not super sharp, but there are lots and lots of them and they liken it to sandpaper in the article. I think this is written by my good friend, Debbie Ronca, who is a freak girl. Yeah, yeah, freakgirl.com. And she's about the least likely person on earth that would ever write an article in noodling. She did a good job with it. Well, that's the great part about our job.

I'm writing about giving a facial at home and she's writing about noodling. Right. We should switch articles occasionally, it seems like. Yeah. But anyway, Debbie wrote this and she did a great job and she says that it's like sandpaper on your arm, which doesn't sound too bad, but if it's really, they said they start twisting and turning once it's on your arm and then it can, you know, cut you up a little bit. Right.

I read a quote from a noodler that said once they start twist spinning, it can rub your hide, it can plum rub your hide to the bone, something like that. Right. So, yeah. That's good. So, yeah, that's your first problem is that this catfish who's gills you have your hand in is rubbing at sandpaper teeth all over your wrist and that can tend to hurt. Also, some catfish can get pretty big.

Yeah. I mean, 40, 60, 80 pounds. That's the flathead. I think the blue cats get even bigger, upwards of 100 pounds, I believe. Right. So, if you are in water that say chin deep, it can pull you under, hold you under and you are a drowned noodler. Yeah.

And you know, in the documentary too, there was this one, one of the legendary guys, noodles. There were these, I'm not sure how this works, but these highways where the lake and the river is now over the highway. So, I guess it's just poor planning or something, but these old broken roads basically in the water. Cool. And they will go under the asphalt to these broken asphalt to get, because that's where the prime layer is.

And they will get trapped under there sometimes and die. Yeah. Apparently, it's also something of a pastime when you're searching a lake for a drowned person. People will also noodle while they're looking for the dead person. That's called killing two birds. Right, exactly. And every once in a while, somebody who's looking for a drowned person and noodling

in the meantime will end up drowning themselves and getting found. They did this in Rivers too. I saw one guy drowned from the current, sweeping him under like a beaver den. Which is why noodling is not a sport to ever be engaged in alone. Yes. They always want noodling buddies. You've got to have partners, spotters, because once you bring the fish up, generally your spotter will help remove the fish from your arm and get it into the boat or on land if

you're by the banks. Right. Or if the fish pulls you under, it's good to have a 200 pound friend to pull you back above water. Yeah. Also, they help barricade the way so that if the catfish tries to escape, it'll just bump into their legs or something like that. Right.

There's one funny part in the documentary where they're interviewing these two guys that are like chest deep and there's only two dudes in the scene and they talk about, you know, do you ever worry about your buddy, you know, when he's under there for a long time and he says, well, you know, we worry about him sometimes when it's been a long time. That's usually when he pops right up. And as he said that, the guy like comes up from underwater like you didn't even know it was.

No editing. No editing. You didn't know there was a third person there, but he was noodling underfoot during the interview. Right. So because you can drown, chin deep water is kind of dangerous. Yeah. But you know, you have to go where the catfish are.

Yeah, sometimes you dive down underwater completely. Wow. And sometimes your head is above water. Right. Another danger to noodling. And if you're picking up that this is kind of a dangerous sport, you're very sharp person. And we should probably take the time to say that how stuff works does not recommend you try noodling alone or as an inexperienced person with other inexperienced noodlers.

I'll just say at all. Sure. Go ahead. At all. Okay. So you can also every once in a while stick your hand into a catfish nest that turns out to be a beaver's dwelling. Yes.

A underwater snake. Muscrats. Muscrats. Apparently are mean. Snapping turtles are real bad too. They'll take a finger off. Yeah. And if you encounter one of those guys, you want to take off.

Yeah. As Ronca says, get out of there. Right. Well, unless you're Jerry Ryder, that's kind of the legendary noodler that was on Dave Letterman. Uh-huh. He's a big snake guy too. So when he sees a snake, he sees that as an opportunity, not a bad thing.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So he grabs the snake. Yeah. He'll grab snakes and he bit him a few times and he's like, see there, I'm bleeding from these three spots. And that's what it felt like. He was like, just kind of like a little hypodermic needle.

Yeah. A death. Yeah. And he said, I'll have him tame pretty soon. So he was. So he catches them and tames them? Oh, that's what he said. Well, he's a snake guy.

Wow. Jerry Ryder's snake circus. Yeah. He's the snake guy I've ever seen. He sounds pretty tough actually. Um, normally, unless you're Jerry Ryder, you don't want to put your hand in a snake hole. No. Because most snakes that live underwater near the water are deadly poisonous.

Sure. Um, but most noodlers will tell you that they can tell a catfish nest from any other kind of nest just by feeling the outside of the nest. Sure. Experience. And the reason for that is that the opening will be sandy and clean and pretty compact because once the male comes in and is guarding the eggs, he's just moving back and forth constantly keeping sand and algae off of the eggs and out of the nest.

So the male catfish keep a pretty tidy nest apparently. You could not pay me any amount of money to do this, man. I know. I go trout fishing in the North Georgia mountains and I'm up to my waist in beautiful clear mountain water. Where you can see what's going on. And I can see what's going on and I'm still, my head is still on a pivot when I'm near the bank because I just know I'm going to look up and like a snake's going to drop on

my head. But these are like the muddy waters of these riverbanks, muddy riverbanks. Well, yeah, that's where catfish dwell. And actually the fact that noodling has become such popular, popular sport, noodlers are kind of barometers of the health of a waterway, depending on how you look at it. The Army Corps of Engineers love to keep a tidy riverway, right? And so do most trout anglers because you can see what you're doing. And that's where, you know, trout generally live in clean water.

But catfish like it, murky, shady, muddy. And so you can, but that's, that's how a waterway is naturally. They're not naturally clean or tidy, right? So apparently the, the Army Corps of Engineers kind of fell asleep at the switch for a couple of decades in the seventies and maybe eighties and basically let the, the Mississippi Delta go to pot. Oh, really? Unless you're a catfish fisherman and then you're like, the catfish population came back.

Right. Right. So the fact that noodlers are finding catfish easily is a, an indicator of the health of the waterway. Right. But there's also a lot of controversy over noodling. Yeah. We have to mention this.

Yeah. And apparently it's, it's a cultural thing. Yeah. Most noodlers, you know, like, like Chuck said, they, they, they're legal in Southern states. It's legal in Southern states and in Midwestern states. Yeah. Very rural activity. Yeah.

Most city folk aren't going to go stick their hand in an underwater hole and hope a catfish bites their hand. Right. You know why? Why? He said, because they're on golf courses. That's a, that's excellent point. Very good.

Excellent point. I mean, Chuck and I are fairly certified and of course neither one of us would ever, ever do this. No. Um, but so I think part of the, part of the reason why noodlers are kind of looked down upon by regular anglers, um, is that it's a rural city, yeah, yeah, uh, head collision, I guess you could say. Sure, cause there's plenty of, uh, you know, city types that grab their, their trout boots

and go out on the weekends and go trout fishing, that kind of thing. But there's also a, um, an environmental concern, which may or may not be true. We're right. Because what, you know, clearly what you're doing is you're pulling out a catfish that's guarding, uh, you know, a big stash of eggs and many times you don't return that fish back to the water. You'll keep it and eat it for food because catfish is good eating. Right.

Uh, and, uh, even when they do return these fish to the water, which they sometimes do, they, you know, just like catch and release fishing, there's a proper way to do it. And they, you know, they get beat all the heck on the, on the shore. Right. So they think they might not survive from just massive injury. Right. And like you were saying, you're removing this catfish from its role of protecting these eggs, which means that once that catfish is gone, all manner of predators go, I'm going

to go eat me thousands of catfish eggs. Right. And they say that not logically have an impact, a huge impact on the population of the catfish. Right. Here's how, because most people don't stick their hand in catfish nest in the hopes that it will bite them and they can pull it out and eat it. Yeah. It has gained in popularity, but it's still a fringe sport.

Right. We're talking like maybe a thousand people across the country that do this. Yeah. Maybe 3,000. That's why there's been no studies. I can't prove anything because no one wants to put any money into a noodling study. Right. Well, I think we should study it to see if it does have an impact.

But in the meantime, most fish and game DNR departments in the various states where it is legal are hedging their bets and are keeping the number of catches a newler can make from May to August, which is spawning season. Right. It's three in Missouri. I think that's the average. And that's lower than if you're just a hook and line angler. You can get 10 in that state per day, three per day and 10 per day, depending on if you're

an angler. Noodlers of course find this unfair, but again, there haven't been any studies. So I think three is an arbitrary number probably. I wonder if anyone's ever caught a noodler, a dead noodler probably hooked a noodler underwater. Apparently there's this boy in the 19th century who went noodling and he got held under by the catfish he caught. But I guess his grip was so tight that like a day or so later, they found the boy and the catfish dead side by side on the sandbar.

Really? Yeah. Hand and mouth still. Wow. And that's something. That's awful. What a way to go. If you're a noodler, that is the way you die.

Well, and that's what Jerry Ryder said. He said, I'll noodle till I die unless noodling kills me. And he shouldn't have said unless. He probably meant especially if noodling kills me. Exactly. Should we talk about the tournament? Yeah. I'll end it briefly.

It is the biggest North American hand fishing tournament. I thought it was the only one, but apparently it's the one. It's the oaky noodling tournament. That's what it's called. And pretty straightforward. It's in July. It's at Bob's Pig Shop in Paul's Valley, Oklahoma. And there's prizes up to like two grand, I think.

If you win, there's different categories like fish of the day and then total catch of total poundage of your three. Yeah. There's also natural and scuba noodling, and scuba noodling is exactly what it sounds like. Yeah. I imagine they're frowned upon. I didn't get any word on that.

I would think so. So is gaffing, which is noodling with the hook. Right. Because basically you're a wuss. Is that what that means? Pretty much. Yeah. Because you're not sticking your hand in there.

You're sticking a hook in there in their gills and pulling them out. And number one, you're immediately doing more damage to them, I imagine. But you're not using your hand. It's hand fishing, not hook fishing, which is. They even frown upon gloves, dude. So this is how teeth these guys are. Well yeah, they frown upon gloves because you can't tell from touching, whether it's a snapping turtle or a muskrat or a catfish, but also they can get snagged on things underwater

and keep you under. So yeah, these are tough fellas and women. Yes, Josh. There's a DVD series even called Girls Gone Grabbin. Yeah, I heard him. Or Grablin. Grablin? Well, that's a typo.

It says Grablin. No, I don't think it's a typo. Maybe it's called Grablin then. And there's been some records, apparently every year somebody sets a new record at the Okie Newling Contest. And what's cool is these people aren't all in the same hole. They're all over the state, as long as the fish is caught within Oklahoma, within a 24 hour period from 7.30 p.m. on Friday to 7.30 p.m. when they're weighed on Saturday, there's

a gentleman's agreement to not go into the same noodling hole that some other people are already in. Yeah, it's like a fishing spot, same deal. That's pretty much it. Oh, the fish has to be live when it's weighed. Right. But other than that, that's pretty much it. The most recent record was set this past July 2009, it's 2010 now, future, 68.6 pounds

by a guy named John Bridges. And he had a stringer, the three fish that you're allowed to catch in that 24 hour period. He won that one too? I don't know if he won that, but I don't see how he didn't because he had another fish that was almost the same weight as part of his stringer, so I imagine he won the stringer that year. Josh, do me a favor, close your eyes and picture a 66 pound catfish up to your elbow. 68.6.

68.6? Can you imagine that? Don't you think I've learned by now the hard way not to close my eyes when you tell me to? Yeah, good point. That's a big old catfish. Yeah. Do you like to eat catfish?

Yeah. I'll eat it. It's not that acidified. Well, I was just, you know, I ate it with a nice foie gras top, of course, a Bear Blanc sauce. Right. Thank you, Chuck. And catfish always, you know, that's 68.6, that's huge.

It's definitely not as big as they get. You know, every like rural area has a legend of a catfish that's like 250 pounds. Did you ever see that King of the Hill where he, I think he was trying to catch General Sherman? No, that was the Simpsons. Was it? Yeah, it was, they called it like General Sherman or something like that. It was this huge catfish and Homer and Marge were on like a save our marriage retreat and

Homer sneaks out to catch the fish and I think I did see that one. Hilarity ensues. That's good stuff. Yeah. I think it was like season five or something. Yeah, but you hear, you do hear definitely hear the rumors like Hogzilla, it's the same thing. Is it?

Well, you'll just hear these rumors about like several hundred pounds. It sounds like Arkansas. I think it's real though. I don't know about Hogzilla, but the huge catfish definitely are. Chuck, let's end this by mentioning that noodling is not necessarily exclusive to North America. No, it's not, Josh. Since 1934, there's a tournament in Nigeria or a festival, I guess you can call it. You're going to take this one?

Oh, should I? Sure. The Arungu Fish and Festival. No. Arungu. Arungu? That's how I take it. That's exactly right.

Arungu. That's a difficult one. That is. That's why we live in Georgia. Well, this is a one hour long contest, which is kind of cool, but I think you can catch a fish any way you can. Right? Well, you can, well, it is hand fishing, but you can use nets.

I think you can't use like hooks and poles. Okay. So you can use nets. And in 2008, the winning fish, you're right, Josh, was 140 pounds. Right. And they take their hand fishing very seriously in Nigeria because they found out that the winning fisherman in 2008, uh, Bello Yakub, uh, they found out that he brought a dead fish from another river and said, Oh, look what I caught.

And they arrested him. Yeah. He was arrested for fraud in a fishing contest. I want to know how you sneak a 140 pound fish into a river. That's probably how he got caught. I mean, you can't, you can't do it very covertly. So somebody saw him and was like, Bello Yakub cheated and they went chink, chink and through the book end.

Those were handcuffs, by the way, just so people understand what that sound effect was all about. Uh, so yeah, that's noodling, right? Uh-huh. I don't think there's anything else to add. So it wasn't too bad for our first one after eight years. Yeah. On a Monday morning.

Right. Eesh. So if you want to learn more about noodling, you can read Debbie Ronca's, uh, Riveting Tale in article form, uh, by typing noodling into the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com, which of course leads us to listener mail. Listener mail, Josh, before we read listener mail, we're going to send a special shout out to our friend Chance and his little sister who have had a really rough go of it over the holidays.

We're not going to get all into it, but, uh, Chance did say it would really make Tina's little sister stay if we said hello. And so we're saying hi and hanging their guys and a happy new year to you. Yeah. Happy new year. Having said that, Josh, I'm going to call this we are frauds and we've been found out. No. Hey, Josh and Chuck, allegedly, I am writing you, uh, a very distressed 15 year old boy

living in Northern Illinois. The reason for my distress is that after closely examining the last several podcasts, I can come to the conclusion that your podcast is a sham 15 year old calling you just figuring this out. This, uh, the evidence for this is that after listening to one of your podcasts on healthcare, I noticed that the voice quality seemed different, leading me to believe that you two never actually sit down and do the podcast together. But the podcast is merely a series of recordings and phrases cleverly put together through

some sound editing equipment. It's really just a series of chucks and right. Right. And then Jerry just makes it all happen right after listening to that podcast. It made me wonder. And I went through other ones and noticed that you two never skip over each other when you talk. That's not true.

We are talking over each other. We are right now. As we speak. Uh, to further reinforce the suspicion, I recently viewed the webcast on December 2nd and Chuck was disappearing into the background of the drape. You know how sometimes the blue screen will mess up and I'll disappear. That's what that is at. Uh, if this is just an honest technical mistake or if this is the work of clever video and

audio syncing gone wrong, please write back to confirm your existence. Until then, I have no choice but to assume there is no podcast, but merely a series of recordings played with editing equipment from Zach. Zach, I think you would very much appreciate one of our fellow podcasts here at HouseDevWords.com called Stuff They Don't Want You to Know. It's about conspiracy theories. I think you'd be right up your alley. Yeah.

You can find that free on iTunes, right Chuck? Uh-huh. And of course you can always find us for free on iTunes, which is probably where you found us to begin with. Yeah. If you want to send us an email accusing us of fraud, we wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you can, uh, wrap that up and address it to StuffPodcast at HouseStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HouseStuffWorks.com.

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The South Dakota Stories, Volume Two. I could see beyond the black hills and the way they called for exploration. I could feel the air, the way it paints against skin and fills hungry lungs. I could hear the way the water ran for miles and the way the bison grazed, the way our boots meet the earth as we step past expected. I could imagine my time in South Dakota and I wish to go back because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.