Derek Dawkins compared sticking his arm down a catfish’s throat to getting his hand slammed in a book.
“It doesn’t hurt, really,” he told my fellow reporter and adventurer, Isabelle Altman, and me as we waded into the shallows of the Noxubee River. “It’s more the surprise.”
It’s last Saturday evening, and we’re going hand-grabbing. Noodling. Grabbling. The practice has several fun names, none of which really illustrate how dangerous it is. When catfish go to lay eggs, they nestle into any dark, enclosed space they can find, usually under rocks, between tree root systems, or in burrows of riverbanks. Hand-grabbers stick their arm into these spaces and wait for the catfish, protecting their eggs, to bite them (“Their teeth feel like sandpaper!” Derek said).
Then, the hand-grabber grabs the catfish by the bottom lip, bear hugs it, and wrestles it to the surface. Someone in the boat helps extricate the catfish from the hand-grabber and they drag or fling the fish into the boat, where it flops around gasping for air until eventually it succumbs to its gradual, weird death.
Isabelle and I look on in disbelief as this is explained to us.
“Just wait ’til you get one,” Derek said. “You’ll be hooked.”
Later, I asked why on earth anyone would do this.
Derek shrugged.
“I like doing things people think are crazy and won’t do,” he said.
Hand-grabbing is only legal in 12 states. Mississippi is one.
■ ■ ■
The setting, at least, is picturesque. Cypress tree root systems create intricate webs on the riverbanks. Trees coated in unhurried ivy canopy the river and filter the sunlight green. Dragonflies buzz by, mating in midair. Beautiful.
When I initially called John Gauntt, Derek’s father-in-law, to ask if he would take Isabelle and I hand-grabbing, he laughed on the phone.
“You know if we get one,” he warned, “I’m going to make you stick your hand in there.”
I agreed, but now we’re actually chest-deep in river water and I’m re-thinking my decision.
We are by a boat ramp, the first potential hiding spot for catfish. Sometimes they’ll nestle under the concrete slab, and we’re about to find out if any are there now.
John takes a deep breath and submerges. He’s wearing a hat, and when he goes underwater it stays floating on the water, sagging a bit and starting to float away. When he went under, John was swallowed completely by the opaque brown water, so for half a minute the hat is the only proof that he had been in the river.
Just when I’m getting nervous for him, an air bubble and a foot splash up as he tries to get a better grip. He stays under for a few more seconds then comes up.
“None there,” he says.
He isn’t even winded.
Later, I asked him how long he can hold his breath.
“I don’t know,” he replies. “As long as I need to, I guess.”
■ ■ ■
Hand-grabbing is a family affair for the Gauntts. The season in Mississippi runs May 1 to July 15, and on Father’s Day, the family’s men — John, Derek, and Derek’s, son Clark, along with John’s brother-in-law Billy Clark, and his son Ben — all went out together. Nothing says, ‘Love you, Dad,’ like wrestling giant fish underwater, right?
John grew up on the Amazon River in South America, where his parents served as missionaries. He regularly swam and fished on the second largest river in the world, one that’s known for anacondas and piranhas.
“This is nothing,” he said of hand-grabbing.
‘Nothing’ is relative, clearly.
In the Noxubee River, the Gauntts have caught catfish that were 30 pounds. I use Clark as a measurement.
“How many Clarks was your biggest fish?” I ask. “One Clark? One-and-a-half Clarks?”
“About one Clark” is the consensus.
For reference, Clark is a 5-year-old. I would put him at a little more than three feet tall.
I’m not sure if I can pull a struggling Clark out of an underwater hole by his mouth, but I’m willing to try.
Still standing by the boat ramp, I prepare to submerge.
I take a deep breath, then stop.
“Do you think about it?” I ask Derek. “Like are you thinking about what could possibly bite your hand when you’re about to go under?”
He just laughs.
And then I’m underwater, feeling along the slimy floor of the river for the opening of the hole. The current’s pushing against me, so I kick my feet to keep from floating away. Limestone smooths out the bottom of the river. It feels like a pool’s bottom — a murky, fast-flowing pool possibly filled with unknown creatures.
I find the catfish opening about the same time I start to run out of air. No time to think about it. I stick my arm in, wait a few seconds for my inevitable, painful death that I deserve for agreeing to do this, and then yank my hand out and kick back up.
Everyone’s grinning at me as I blink water out of my eyes. I was probably underwater a third of the time John was. I’m sure it was much less graceful.
But I did it.
■ ■ ■
According to John, “true grit” hand grabbers will stick their hands in the root systems of the cypresses along the Noxubee River.
The webs are perfect for catfish. Downside: They’re also perfect for snakes and snapping turtles.
“If you stick your hand in there,” John said, “you don’t really know what you’re going to get.”
My mind flashes back to the research I had done before I came today. I made it through two Google search pages, filled with horror stories of hands bitten off by snapping turtles and catfish holding people underwater until they drowned, before I exited out.
Thankfully, the Gauntts are not quite “true-grit.” They made the practice safer by building boxes for the catfish, which they waterlogged and put in the river. The boxes are up to six feet long and make nice homes for unsuspecting catfish. In earlier years, the Gauntts would find new catfish in their boxes as often as twice a week during hand-grabbing season.
They have six boxes. We checked five for catfish. Since it was late in the season, the Gauntts did not expect a lot of action.
After checking the second to last box, though, Derek came back up and slapped the water angrily.
“There was one in there!” he said. “He got away!”
The fish had dodged his hand, rammed him in the chest, then slipped past him and swam away.
“Dang,” Derek said. “We had one here for you, and I let him get away. I’m sorry.”
Isabelle and I both assured him it was okay, but he was still frustrated.
Clark spoke up.
“I bet he’ll be back tomorrow,” he said. “Can we come back tomorrow when you get off work and look for him again, Dad?”
“If you want,” Derek said, still smarting over the escaped fish.
“Yeah. And you know what?” Clark continued, “I bet if we come back tomorrow there will be two or three fish in there. And we can catch them, and tie them together, and throw them in the boat, and they’ll be flip-flopping around.”
Derek looked at his son and laughed at this improbable scenario.
“Yeah bud, we can do that,” he said.
Clark nodded, satisfied.
When Derek tells people he goes hand-grabbing, they tell him he’s crazy. But for the Gauntts, the sport is a way to spend time with each other. It did not matter if they caught 10 fish or none.
What mattered was that Clark wanted to come back tomorrow.
Dispatch reporter Isabelle Altman contributed to this report.
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