KDSN RADIO News
Bill calls for catfish ‘noodling’ licenses in Iowa
A bill to make it legal to go “noodling” for catfish in Iowa lakes, streams, and rivers is under consideration in the Iowa House.
Representative Ray “Bubba” Sorensen of Greenfield sponsored the bill to have the state start issuing noodling licenses after hearing from Iowans who want to try to catch catfish with their bare hands. “I’ve had constituents bring it to me before,” he said, “but this was an entire family.”
Sorensen said the teenage girl in that family went “noodling” in another state, “and that’s where she kind of fell in love with it.”
It is legal to go “noodling” for catfish in at least 17 other states, including Wisconsin and Illinois.
The fishing technique has opponents, however.
“How noodling works is a person reaches in with their hand and the biology of the catfish kind of creates a kind of a handle or a hook for a person once you get past your wrist and you grab on and the catfish grabs on and the way it ends is one of the two will give up,” Jim Obradovich, a lobbyist for the Iowa Conservation Alliance, said during a House subcommittee hearing on the bill.
Beyond the potential of injury to the human hand, Obradovich said noodling isn’t good for the fish.
“Noodlers generally don’t then take that catfish and then filet it or eat it. They just send it back. This causes damage to the fish,” Obradovich said. “The larger fish which they go for in this activity are the gene pool that we want to keep around and keep healthy for catfish procreation.”
The bill has cleared the House Natural Resources Committee and was reviewed yesterday by another subcommittee.
Noodling for fish is sometimes referred to as “tickling” or “hogging” and people caught using the noodling technique to snag a catfish can face a fine. In 2019, a man who pulled a 50-pound catfish from the Mississippi River and was photographed with his catch in downtown Davenport was fined nearly $100. In 2012, a Harlan man was pictured in the local newspaper with a 30-pound catfish, and he was assessed a $177 fine for noodling.
