I just watched a documentary called Okie Noodling and it was fascinating. Noodling is fishing for catfish with just your hand. Nope, they aren’t wrestling the cats, they reach their hands into catfish holes and wiggle until the catfish bites down on their hand. The noodler will then ‘wrassle’ it until they get the thing landed. The do all this underwater while holding their breath. We are talking some monster catfish.

You really can’t get more of an extreme sport than catching these behomeths by hand. It makes you wonder where and when it first started… but I can imagine that it was some dude that couldn’t afford a fishing pole or bait. It is a serious slice of Americana that the mainstream public knows little or nothing about.
It is easy to sit back and laugh at these folks – easy to ridicule them as backwards yokels – but this film doesn’t. It is rare that a filmmaker takes a look at anything done away from the city without a smugness or a underlying contempt for their traditions, hobbies and even intelligence. This is how a documentary should be produced… tell the story.

RATING 8 out of 10