Noodling

I knew I wanted to catch a giant catfish by hand ever since I saw it on TV. It looks scary as hell on TV and is just as spooky for the first time in real life. I first met the River Bottom Brothers ,Chad and Brian Douglas when I was shooting a TV show about noodling and cooking in Eastern Oklahoma.  Hook, Line and Dinner was not nearly as awesome of a time as it was pitched to me but I did get to meet Brian and Chad and made some great friends.  They invited me out to South East Kansas with the promise I would get to experience what real noodling would be like. In August 2014 they did not disappoint.  My gf and 2 kids and I drove out to Kansas and got in late. That didn’t keep us from staying up all night talking about the fun we would be having the following morning. I went over techniques and what to expect and felt I had a pretty good idea of what was to come. That morning as we were canoeing down the river and approaching my first spot I was nervous as hell. From the bank the spot we would be noodling just looks like someone threw a whole bunch of junk concrete in the water. I was warned to watch out for rebar and don’t move the concrete much to keep it from potentially falling in on my arm. Brian and Chad worked ahead of me and I was poking my hands around in holes they had already checked because I wanted to get a feel of what to expect. Suddenly Brian hollered that he had found a fish in a hole and for me to come quick and grab him. I ran over and helped use my body to block the escape route and Brian told me he had the catfish by the jaw and I need to help grab it. I reached in and with the expert guidance of my two friends pulled a 7 lb flathead catfish out of the water.  What a rush!! I posed for pictures and we released the little guy because we had larger catfish on our mind. As we approached the next spot Chad told me this was their “honey hole”, earlier in the summer they had caught a 70 lb monster here. Within 2 minutes of arriving Brian was hollering again that a really big fish had bit him again.  We all crowded around the piece of concrete and blocked off escape passages while Brian tried to get the fish to bite him again. It latched on to his hand and and he was in for a tug of war. Brian told me to come over and help hold the fish so Chad could run a stringer through it’s bottom lip. Once we had it on the stringer Brian removed his hand and I put both of my hands in the fishes mouth in preparation of bringing it out. As I pulled back the fish started to thrash something fierce but I help on and we all admired the 30 lbs flathead I held in my hands. We decided to keep this fish for eating later and left him tied to the canoe and continued to noddle along the bank.  We spooked a couple little fish out of their holes but nothing great. Chad pointed to the next spot we were about to fish and told me that was the same spot they had caught the monster in.  I went and blocked the far end and Brian held onto the edge and slid his legs in. A  big fish proceed to bite him several times on the feet.  We knew it was a good size fish but Brian said it wasn’t the monster that they had caught and released.  The fish was in a corner of the hole that I couldn’t get to but we knew he couldn’t escape so it would just take patience and team work. Slowly Brian worked his legs under the fish and pinned him to the roof of his hole and started to slide him forward. Once he was close enough Brian grabbed the jaw and so did Chad. I quickly moved over to where they were and took Chad’s spot so he could try and put the stringer in the mouth.  It was a pain because it was such a tight space but we managed to get it strung up and Brian moved his hands and got out of the way and it was up to me to pull it out of the hole and hoist it up for everyone to see. I jerked the fish upwards and fell over backwards with all the momentum, but held on to a 36 lb flathead catfish.  We had 2 30 lb + fish and a 12 lb so we decided to call it a day since it was well over 100 degree and went home to clean catfish and prepare a fish fry.

Be sure and check out some of the pictures from the trip Click here