new Animal Planet Show: Hillbilly Handfishin'

[Catherine Wheel]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...022206917.html


I saw this in the paper and thought it was pretty funny.

Animal Planet's 'Hillbilly Handfishin' ': Using the old noodle


Animal Planet - the network about things people do for, and to, animals - announced Tuesday that it had ordered a reality series in which city slickers pay good money to go to Oklahoma to noodle.

"Noodling" is hillbilly for "catching catfish with your hands." Don't take my word for it - Animal Planet is calling the series "Hillbilly Handfishin' ."

The show, Animal Planet explains, stars "self-proclaimed hillbilly" Skipper Bivins, who, for a price, takes silly city slickers out and teaches them how to catch catfish with their bare hands.

Hairy Old-Guy Chests Alert: In most of the photos of Bivins floating around the Web - he's apparently the rock star of noodlers - and in those sent to us by Animal Planet, he is shirtless. It's not pretty.

Anyway, Oklahoma appears to be one of the states in which noodling is legal as of 2008, according to the fine folk at askcatfishfishing.com. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was sorry to tell us that it had no idea in which states noodling is okay and in which it isn't because it's a state-by-state issue. According to a 2008 post on askcatfishfishing.com, if you live in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma or Tennessee - noodle away! Anywhere else, no noodling.

Flathead catfish are easy targets because they live in murky holes in rivers and lakes. When catfish are spawning, they like to find nice, murky holes in which to lay their eggs. The male catfish then thinks he's got the easy assignment, standing guard over the future generation.

All you have to do is find that murky hole, then stick your hand in it. The daddy catfish will probably swim forward and latch onto your hand as a defensive maneuver. If the fish is large enough, the noodler can hook his or her hand around the fish's gills, then you yank out your arm. (Usually a noodler has at least one spotter who helps bring in the fish, which seems like cheating but apparently isn't.) Reading up on the fine art of noodling, we were conscious of a passing pang for the catfish, feeling that life for these unfortunate animals must be one thing after another.
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So Daddy Catfish hands in his dinner pail while trying to guard the roost. Everybody wins! Except the occasional noodler who gets a finger bitten off, or drowns after getting his body stuck in the murky hole while trying to shove his arm down a catfish, which, frankly, seems like as good a way to decrease the surplus population as any.

[EyesOfAJackal]

If you haven't seen this video, brace yourself:

[The Jesus]

I'll stick to trout tickling.