View from the North 40: Going fishing with the ol' solutions generator

On the surface, catfish, a German crisis, baby ducks, the American Old West, modern American Southeast and a sport that sounds like pasta making, but isn’t, don’t seem to have much in common, but I think we can get there from here.

News reports started coming out in the fall of 2012 that the wels catfish, a type of catfish common across Europe, were taking over rivers in Germany, including the famous Rhine. This is pretty important stuff, especially since 1) the biologists don’t have a clear reason why they are taking over the waterways, and 2) these are seriously big fish that have been eating their way through the aquatic species food chain and are starting to feast on the birds and mammals.

Wels catfish generally average 4 to 5 feet in length, but they have been known to reach 10 feet or more. Video footage on Youtube shows them feeding on pigeons that had gathered on shore to drink water and eat. While you may have as little sympathy for a pigeon as I do, consider that in 2012 a family reported that a catfish pulled their 14-year-old daughter under water.

The girl got away, but still the wels catfish, it seems, is working on becoming a miniature, freshwater killer whale — a very homely, pasty, mustachioed and more than just a little bit freakish, freshwater, killer whale cousin to be sure.

Certainly, the goonch catfish in India is closer to becoming the king of freshwater killer whales, with some fish getting large enough to feast on adult humans and water buffalo — yes, recorded deaths by catfish — but residents of the town of Offenbach are still quite unhappy with one catfish in a city pond.

It’s no water buffalo killer, but the Associated Press reported this week that the 5-foot long catfish consumed all the other fish in the pond then started in on the waterfowl on the water’s surface. At the point that the fish ate all the ducklings it officially wore out its welcome.

City officials went on the hunt for a fisherman to remove the catfish from the pond. Currently, the plan is to, without fuss, catch the catfish and relocate it to a more appropriate and secure pond.

This is a pretty civilized, aka boring, solution for folks who are, as a whole, enamored with the American Wild West of old. Some Germans go crazy over the Wild West participating in re-enactments of the cowboy and Indians days, some do modern western horseback and shooting competitions.

One would think they could come up with a more dramatic solution, and one that isn’t so short-sighted, especially for a problem that extends well beyond this one pond.

Let’s cut away now to the American Southeast where a not well-known association of people fish for catfish in bare-knuckled action, literally.

Called noodling, they use one of their hands as a form of bait.

The person noodling gets into the water, lowering themselves until only their head is showing as they reach their bait hand into holes in the banks under water — holes that beaver and finger-severing snapping turtles might live in. When a catfish grabs the bait — aka, their hand — the noodler grabs the fish and wrestles it out of the water.

Noodling is also called hogging, dogging, tickling and grabbling, but it sounds like a marriage of rodeo steer wrestling and WWE professional wrestling in a sort of professional fish wrestling event.

Noodling has been declared illegal in many states because of the danger to people noodling and to the catfish populations, but some states have seasons now.

This is my proposal: The Germans should get these noodling folks to come over for a big noodling event that’s half competition for biggest catfish, half workshop to teach the Europeans how to noodle like a hillbilly boss and half catfish festival with a big cooking competition.

Catch and release one fish for a city and a pond is saved once. Teach a nation to be noodling redneck fools and they save their waterways for generations to come.

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I could calculate the duckling lives saved using a complex mathematical statistic generator, but I don’t want to deprive you of the satisfaction of doing the math for yourselves at [email protected].