A few days ago I contracted a bad case of cabin fever and felt like I would absolutely go crazy if I didn’t go fishing very soon. Lately I avoided fishing during the daylight hours because it was just too hot. The only thing left was night fishing for crappie, and that got slower with each trip. The weatherman said it would be cloudy with a fair chance of showers so I jumped at the chance.
After fishing for bass for a few hours and only catching a few small fish, I decided to try some new places. I pulled into a large pocket with several houses in it. I fished around several piers with no luck when I noticed a boat pulled up on shore and three men wading around on the boat ramp.
A little farther down the bank was another guy wading on another boat ramp. At first I thought they were trying to keep cool, but one of the guys went under water and a few seconds later he came up with a giant catfish in his arms.
I had heard of this thing called noodling, but I’d never seen it done before. I sat in my boat and watched them for half an hour or so and in that time they caught three more big catfish.
Each time they caught a fish they would hold it in their arms, admire the size of the fish and then release it. They told me that counting the four fish they had caught while I watched, they had caught and released a total of 11 big catfish that day. They weighed from 15 to 30 pounds. They just caught these giants for the fun of it.
Some of these concrete boat ramps have big holes washed out underneath them that resemble a cave. These catfish spawn in dark holes. They lay their eggs in the cave and remain there to protect them from predators.
The fisherman wears a pair of heavy leather gloves on his hands to protect him from the catfish’s powerful jaws and sharp teeth. When he sticks his hand back in the cave and invades the nest, the big catfish will violently attack and chomp down on the glove-covered hand to protect the nest.
Now the fisherman grabs the lower jaw of the fish and wrestles it to the surface.
The dangerous part of this is the holes under the concrete boat ramp. If the ramp has several holes leading to the cave and only one hole is large enough for the catfish to pass through, this could be very dangerous.
If the fisherman sticks his arm through a hole too small for the catfish to pass through and the fish clamps down on the leather glove and refuses to release the fisherman, it could easily drown the fisherman.
I have seen people jump out of perfectly good airplanes, jump with a bungee cord from a high tower and now I have seen people catch giant catfish with their hands, all in the name of excitement.
I must be getting old because catching a 4-pound bass on a rod and reel is plenty of excitement for me.
