If “The Walking Dead” has taught us anything, it’s that when the zombies rise, your outdoorsy friend is gonna have an edge. For one woman, her edge is in the muddy bottoms of lakes and streams.
Social media personality and bowhunter Hannah Barron recently went viral with a TikTok post that’ll guarantee her a bed in the post-apocalyptic compound of her choice: food procurement. It’s even better that she doesn’t need bullets, arrows, or even string.
What Is Noodling?
As long as she’s got two hands and a dream, Barron and her team will have a fighting chance. That’s because she’s a pro-noodler. Noodling is catching by hand. It involves “wading or swimming out into the water and probing underwater holes with your bare hands so that an angry catfish can chomp down them,” explains the site, MeatEater. It is also called “grabbling,” “hogging,” “gatfisting,” “graveling,” and “stumping.”
It’s also a really ancient practice, despite seeming new (thanks social media). Irish immigrant James Adair first documented it in 1775. He wrote that many different Indigenous people would catch catfish by hand in the rivers around South Carolina. It gained popularity with Scottish immigrants in the 18th century.
Later, during the Great Depression, it was a way for poor families to put food on the table. The sport died out, though, because it depleted the fish population and is very dangerous. “Many noodlers drowned while attempting to fill their freezers with catfish fillets, so noodling was eventually made illegal in all but four states,” MeatEater reports. Though unsurprisingly, it persisted.
‘He Bit Me On The Leg’
In her video, which has over 11.9 million views, Barron smiles broadly as she squats down in a body of water. She’s near a catfish den and is trying to figure out how to best proceed. So she takes a big gulp of air and disappears under the water. When she pops back up, she’s smiling but without a catfish—though one did bite her leg.
So she dives back under, and this time, there’s success. “I’ve got to get my legs out, buddy,” she says to the fish. Then she emerges, a huge catfish on her left arm. Next, she sinks back down, only to have another fish try to remove her shoe.
Barron gets a “ninja look” on her face, per the cameraman. As she stands all the way up, a second huge catfish is on her right arm. She didn’t even fully submerge herself. “I love this,” she says to the camera, with a huge smile on her face.
‘Daisy Dukes And A Dream’
The internet is fascinated and horrified. Some want to see and understand the process; others are nervous just being in a body of water.
“Giggling while saying something bit your leg, in dark merky [sic] water then saying you love it… is diabolical. Coming out double fisted hand caught fish then saying well, he bit me on the leg… is a level of comfort in life that I’ll never unlock,” one viewer said.
Another commented on Barron’s nonchalance, writing, “‘Let me see it there’s another one’ while she effortlessly holds an actual dinosaur in her other hand [mind blown emoji].”
“Meanwhile I nearly piss myself when seaweed touches my leg,” injected a third TikToker.
And another noticed, “People spend 1000s of dollars on fishing gear, and this corn-fed country girl just wades out there in her daisy dukes and catches the two biggest catfish I’ve ever seen with her hands…”
How Many People Can A Catfish Feed?
There are multiple species of catfish, and they typically range in size from 5 to 40 pounds. Though some can get up to 100 pounds and the Mekong giant catfish can exceed 600 pounds. But in America, most noodlers are fishing for blue and flathead catfish. The world record for a blue catfish is 143 pounds, while flatheads can grow up to 40 pounds. Though “75-plus pounders [are] not uncommon,” reports Field & Stream.
So assuming you got lucky and caught a 50-pounder, you could theoretically feed up to 30 people. Of course, this depends on portion size and sides, but that’s a lot of meat, especially in the zombie apocalypse. Even if experts do think the larger the fish, the “muddier” the meat tastes.
World ending or not, if you decide you’re interested in learning how to noodle, the experts suggest going with an expert. “These fish are extremely powerful and more than capable of dragging or holding an inexperienced noodler under the water and drowning them,” cautions MeatEater. And that’s before any discussion about the wisdom of jamming your arm into muddy, underwater holes.
BroBible reached out to Hannah Barron via her website and via TikTok direct message. We will update this if she responds.
@hannahbarron96 New party trick 😂 #fyp #foryoupage