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Missouri Approves Fishing With Bare Hands
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
By SCOTT CHARTON
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Next summer, it will be legal to plunge into some
Missouri rivers and grab catfish by hand - a type of fishing that is not
for the faint of heart.
Known variously as noodling or hogging, handfishing has long been a
misdemeanor punishable by fines, because state officials fear it depletes
breeding-age catfish. It can also be dangerous: Noodlers hold their breath
for long periods under water and sometimes come up with fistfuls of
agitated snakes or snapping turtles instead of fish.
That does not discourage enthusiasts, who insist there is great
sportsmanship in fishing with your bare hands.
So after years of urging by noodlers, and lopsided legislative support for
easing up on handfishers, the Missouri Conservation Commission has
approved an experimental handfishing season next summer. Forms of
handfishing are already legal in 11 states, including neighboring
Oklahoma, Arkansas and Illinois.
"It's a start," John Smith, deputy director of the Conservation
Department, said Tuesday. "We are moving forward in good faith to answer
the legitimate biological concerns that we have, and balance that with the
requests for making this process legal."
Missouri's biological concerns are that handfishers, who go for the
biggest fish they can wrestle from riverbanks or hollow logs, will take
too many sexually mature fish from their underwater nests.
The commission agreed to a June 1-July 15 season, during which handfishers
who have bought a $7 permit can use only their bare hands and feet to
catch a daily total of five catfish. Fish under 22 inches long must be
thrown back.
Handfishing will be legal only along specified stretches of the Fabius,
St. Francis and Mississippi rivers.
So secretive are handfishers that they have formed a club called Noodlers
Anonymous. A University of Missouri-Columbia professor who got the group's
cooperation in surveying its members found that most are men, average age
about 40, living in rural areas.
Howard Ramsey of Paris, Mo., president of Noodlers Anonymous, said the
season is a "very positive step."
"I hope this is the first step toward a statewide noodling season," Ramsey
said. "Noodling is great fun and very satisfying and any lover of fishing
should try it."
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