They shoot catfish, don’t they?
Nah. They grab ‘em!
I love America. Home of the free. Home of the brave. Home of people who fish for giant catfish with their bare hands. Now, I’m not talking about catfish this big. Or even this big. But still, pretty damn big. I mention all this because a friend sent me this story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution yesterday:
“Hey, we’re rednecks,” Brown said. He cracked open a Bud Light as he aimed his 16-foot Alumacraft johnboat toward a mound of rocks where water eddied under a low-hanging limb. “We like any kind of fishing.”
Brown, Owen and anyone else hoping a fish will bite their fingers can thank the Georgia Legislature for the privilege. Legislators this year passed a bill making noodling — also called grabbling, hand-fishing or hogging — just as legal as using fishing poles, rod-and-reels and trotlines for freshwater fish. Georgia joined neighboring states Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina in opening the state’s waterways to noodlers.When they heard noodling would be legal Friday, Brown and Owen made sure to have the day off work for a day on the river. By midmorning, they were on the Flint, five miles south of Concord, waiting for something to move under their hands.
They didn’t wait long.
“Whoop!” Owen, 39, came out of the water like a dog, shaking himself, then plunged back under a gray rock in 4 feet of water. He thrashed once, twice, then came back out, grumbling.
“Got away” he said. “It was a little ‘un.”
When I lived in Georgia, handgrabbin’ was illegal. Can you believe that? It’s our God-given right as Americans to do stupid shit. I wasn’t about to let the damn state gubment keep me down. So, I drove over to the right-thinking state of Mississippi to stick my hand up in some catfish. (I actually rather enjoyed myself.)
I know I’ve linked to this story before. But hey, chicks dig it. And it’s the Fourth of July — so I thought this rather fitting. Our founding fathers would have wanted us to go noodlin’. I know that for a fact.
Happy Independence Day!
07.04.2005, 4:34 PM · Sports
4 Comments
Happy Independence Day! But I dare you to grab catfish in Thailand
Enough with the rednecks and their big fish. Give us something more interesting to waste our time reading. Anyway, real rednecks use M-80s for fishing.
Not to sound too chauvinistic, a Chinese chef won the best “roast beef and yorkshire” pudding competition in London years ago.
Cooking is in our blood. Drinking is in yours.
:)
Chinese can cook anything. I meant A N Y T H I N G!