Noodling for Flatheads Author:Burkhard Bilger In parts of Oklahoma they still noodle for flatheads, or, in other words, some people there still fish for catfish using their arms as both hook and bait. A noodler heads for an appropriate river, where he reaches into likely nooks and crevices, wiggling his fingers as he waits for a nip. When it comes, he hooks his thumbs into the a... more »ttacker's mouth or thrusts his hand down its throat, then waits for the thrashing to stop. If he is lucky, the thing on the end of his hand is a fish.
In Arkansas this is called 'hogging', in Mississippi 'grabbling', in Nebraska 'stumping' and in Kentucky 'dogging', but in Texas and Oklahoma it is 'noodling'. With no need of expensive equipment, noodling is cheap, but it has its drawbacks: catfish don't have fangs, but they do have maxillary teeth. If you know what you are looking for, you can tell a noodler by the faint tracery of scars along his forearm.
Noodling for Flatheads is a glorious, wonderfully funny and movingly nostalgic exploration of the surviving (and often dying) peculiarities of the American South, from the eating of squirrel brains in Kentucky, frog-ranching in Georgia and coonhunting all over, to the Tennessee sport of rolleyholing, the most peculiar game of marbles you have ever heard of.
Whether it be as a result of the threat of commercialization or fears of Mad Squirrel Disease, many of these activities will be lucky to survive far into the new century. In the eccentric Amercian tradition of Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent and Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, Burkhard Bilger's book is both a wonderful elegy, hilarious, fascinating and touching, to a great tradition of American eccentricity and independence, and a celebration of the survival of local traditions in the era of the global triumph of Disney, Barbie and Coca-Cola.« less