A noodling we will go….
Tuesday, June 7th, 2005I went noodling this past Saturday with five other guys: Shelby, Steve, Danny, Herb, and Wes. The trip was organized by Shelby, who is an avid outdoorsman. If you have never heard of noodling check out this column on ESPN or this story on NPR.
To make a long story short you walk in a river or creek, stick your hand down a hole and hope that a big catfish will bite it. If you are lucky enough to have a fish bite you, then you get the opportunity to wrestle it out of the hole. And if it is big enough you can keep it and eat it for dinner. 
Sounds like fun, right?
Well, actually it was a lot of fun. Just being outdoors, walking up/floating down the river was a lot of fun. We only caught three fish, but that was no big deal because:
- I got a whole lot of exercise(Try walking upstream for a couple of miles)
- It was like searching for buried treasure
- Floating down the river was great
- Did I mention it was fun
I was not one of the lucky ones to actually catch a fish. The closest I came was trying to grab a carp that Danny had pinned between his foot and a log in about two feet of water. I grabbed it several times by the tail, but I couldn’t ever get its gill or mouth. It finally wiggled its way to freedom. Oh well, we would have just let it go even if I had caught it. Which is what we did with the other fish that were caught. A 5 lb catfish, 6.5 lb catfish, and a carp.
Anyways, lots of fun and yes I still have all my fingers.