"Manly Pursuits":
Gander Pulls, Mumblety-Peg, and Noodling
We sat around the small, square table discussing potential topics for our Language and Culture segment of Taney and Beyond. I wanted to include a piece about gander-pulling, mumblety-peg, and other male-dominated diversions of the past. Our team leader suggested that I include "noodling" in that category. Noodling? Well, sure, I thought, I could insert a paragraph or two about noodling, not that I expected to find much information about it.
What I discovered was several interesting accounts of noodling, and next to nil on the topics of mumblety-peg, a knife flipping contest of sorts, and gander-pulling, a rather cruel-sounding game performed by the men racing on horseback to be the first to grab the greased neck of a goose positioned in the path of the riders. (It is assumed that the winner received the bird for a prize). That being the case, I leave the other "manly pursuits" to future researchers and focus on the not-so-lost art of noodling in the Ozarks waters.
Noodling--also called tickling (Crumpler); hogging; bulldogging; hand-fishing (Waterman); or as my dad called it, rock fishing--is a fishing method of grabbing or hooking a nesting catfish either by hand or with smallish hooks. By whatever name, it is dangerous, and it is illegal!
Noodling season lasted from mid-May to late July or early August depending on the different spawning times of the different types of catfish found in the Ozarks, rivers and streams. The accomplished noodler knew that catfish made their nests at varying depths of water, and those nests, whether a hollow log submerged in the water or an underwater rock ledge or other nook, might have more than one entrance. The nesting spot was surveyed carefully before the noodling began.
A nesting catfish, either male or female, remains with the nest to protect the eggs or fingerlings from intruders, but sometimes that nest contains non-catfish inhabitants. It wouldn't do to stick your hand or leg into the nest to discover a or snake occupied the area. Their bites carry a more dangerous energy than that of a fish, although there are many a noodler with hunks of flesh or appendages removed from an angry, biting catfish. While most noodlers fished with their hands, some used small hooks to grab the brooding fish and cut down on injuries from the spiny gill guards of the fish's head.
Because catfish nests found in a river are generally at shallower depths than those in a lake, noodlers preferred to fish the rivers. It was ill-advised to go noodling alone, since the biggest problem related to river noodling is the possibility of drowning in the swift currents of area streams. To decrease the danger of drowning, some noodlers fished with little or no clothing, possibly only a gunnysack tied to their waist to hold their captured fish.
Noodling is illegal in Missouri because of the potential danger in depleting the catfish population. Unguarded nests leave the eggs or newly-hatched fish an easy meal for water predators.
That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that noodling is a dead art. Several of my young students have described the thrill of noodling with wicked gleams in their eyes, assuring me that they learned their skill from the older men in their families, affirming the idea that native customs die slowly in Taney County. In true hillmen fashion, their bold tales of underwater nest robbing are full of Herculean-sized feats of strength and skill, attesting to the belief that hand fishing is alive and a much keener sport than the regular rod and reel variety.
To counter their delightful hyperbole, I remind them that, if caught, they stand to pay rather hefty fines and hours of community service. I'm not sure they consider that terribly important. The art is more than fishing to these young men: it is a part of their cultural identity. Noodling is their connection to the past. I am reminded of this truth by Mary Elizabeth Mankey's poem:
The NoodlerFrom the man-made lake on the mountain,From a civilized job with men,Comes Andy back to the riverFishing and idling again.He casts off the shackles of laborFor riches other than bread,Stumbling, and cursing, and sweatingThrough the rocks in the river bed.With a magical twist of his own black artAnd a devilish crooked grin,He dragged forth a struggling monsterBattling with hackle and fin,Gleaming there in the twilight,Turquoise, and silver, and gold -What are codes and statutes to Andy?He is the Law of the old. (44)
Many native Ozarkians have first or second-hand accounts of noodling experiences to share. Brian Roberts submitted this piece to us for another perspective, void of the romantic nostalgia we sometimes attach to native customs:
Noodling can Be Dangerous, As Well As Illegal
Noodling for catfish is an exhilarating, but illegal, pastime not commonly heard of in this day and age. It consists of finding catfish dens in the muddy banks of rivers and streams. The fish make these dens by backing up to the bank and waving their tails back and forth. This eventually digs a hole in the side of the bank for the catfish to hole up in and be protected, and makes a places to ambush food from as it swims or floats by the entrance to the hole.
Once the den is located, the noodler wades in front of the hole and sticks in his arm. He attempts to make the fish open its mouth, so he can stick his hand and arm into the fish's mouth. Once the noodler's arm is in the mouth, the fish will close its mouth on the arm, allowing the noodler to pull out the fish.
This method of fishing is not as easy as it sounds. If the noodler misses the fish's mouth, the fish will shoot out of the hole like a rocket. Unfortunately, the noodler will not have time to get out of its way and will get slugged in the stomach or chest by the scared fish. Catfish can get very large, and they have hard heads. The combination of something that is fast, heavy, and hard can have a traumatic effect when colliding with a stationary person.
This can be attested to by a gentleman who tried this method of fishing. There was an old trapper with three sons who enjoyed the pastime of noodling for catfish. Another gentleman, who worked with one of the sons, had heard the first man talking about noodling and wanted to try it, so the two went out together one day. After watching the other guys pull out several fish, the novice felt he was ready to try it. He found a den and reached in for the fish. Unfortunately, he missed the catfish's mouth. He felt his hand slide down the side of the fish's head. This scared the fish, making it exit its hole in a hurry. The fact that there was a man standing in front of the hole didn't matter to the fish; it simply knocked the man out of its way.
Considering that the person involved was well over six feet tall and over two hundred pounds, something that can attain sufficient speed in approximately two feet to knock a man out of its way deserves to be handled with respect. The gentleman involved in the collision suffered a very nasty bruise and two cracked ribs. He described being hit by a fish as being about the same as standing right in front of a softball player hitting a softball with a bat as hard as he could straight into your ribs.
Noodling can also be dangerous as well as being painful. During one of many noodling expeditions, one of the sons mentioned before, found out just how dangerous it can be. He and his brothers had been out noodling, managing to pull out a forty pound fish from its hole. When they pulled it up onto the bank, they noticed the fish had bite marks on its side where something had tried to shallow it! After showing their father the fish, they examined topographical maps of the small river, looking for a place something that big could hide out.There was only one hole in the small, shallow river in that area deep enough for a fish that large to live. The father told his sons not to after that fish without him along.The next day, the two boys decided to try it anyway.
When they reached the designated spot at the river, one of the boys dived in to see how deep the water was. After being underwater for quite some time, he finally surfaced and told his brother it was about twelve feet deep, and that he felt the big fish down there, and it was huge! Deciding he was going after it, the boy dived back down. He found the monster's head, but couldn't get it to open its mouth with his hands, so he began kicking it in the head.The fish finally opened its mouth. The boy stuck his leg in the fish's mouth. The fish clamped down. But the fish was too big; the boy couldn't move it, and he was stuck under twelve feet of water with his leg in a fish's mouth!
While the brother waited on the bank, he began worrying. His brother had been underwater for quite some time. He finally dove in to find his brother frantically trying to remove his leg from the out of the monstrous fish. Between the two boys, they were finally able, by repeatedly hitting and kicking it in the head, to persuade the fish to open its mouth and release the brother.
The boy survived his encounter, but not exactly unscathed. Catfish don't have sharp teeth like some other fish, such as walleye or northern pike, but they do have teeth. An average sized catfish has very small teeth that feels like sandpaper, but in one this size, the teeth, still fairly small, are farther apart and some larger. While fighting with the fish and pulling his leg out, the boy lost most of the skin on his leg from the top of his thigh all the way to his foot.
I understand that, after the boy healed, he and his brothers and their father went back after the monster. They managed to haul it in this time, but this time their noodling technique involved a tractor and a chain. The fish, I don't remember exactly how much it weighed, probably would have been a record of some sort, if it had been caught legally.
Works Cited
Images of catfish from http://www.arttoday.com. member page. July 1999.
Mahnkey, Mary Elizabeth. "The Noodler." Ozark Lyrics. Third Edition. Point Lookout, MO: School of the Ozarks Press, 1935, p.44.
Crumpler, Hugh. "Fishing the Wild Streams of the Ozarks, Or Hurray For the Huzzah!" OzarksWatch. Winter 1991. The Springfield-Greene County Library, Shepard Room.
<http://198.209.8.166/scripts//ozarkswatch/ow403d.htm> (13 July 1999)
Roberts, Brian. "Noodling Can Be Dangerous, as well as Illegal." Unpublished article. July 1999.
Waterman, Todd. "Noodling: The Old Art of Catching Fish With the Hands." Bittersweet. Fall 1980. The Springfield-Greene County Library. Shepard Room. <http://198.209.8.166/scripts//bittersweet/fa80e.htm> (13 July 1999)
