We floated in the slack water, held the grassy shore with one hand and slid our lower bodies into the dark unknown under the bank.
The opening wasn’t high, perhaps 12 inches, but it was at least 6 feet across and extended seemingly forever under the bank.
My partner and guide, Dr. Nick Anderson of Neenah, was confident there was at least one and likely two flathead catfish in the hole.
The side-by-side strategy sought to use our bodies to block any fish from fleeing and act as fish finders.
With just my face above water, I stretched my feet as far as they could reach under the bank, looking for contact.
It didn’t take long. A sudden, hidden force clamped and released my right foot as if it had been placed in a die stamp.
“Hey!” I yelled. “I got bit!”
Anderson beamed.
“Did you feel the bank vibrate?” he said. “That was awesome.”
Anglers use lots of methods to get fish to bite.
But we are typically not the bait.
Then again, just about everything about noodling is unusual, at least in Wisconsin.
And as Anderson showed me over four hours on June 29 on a Wisconsin river, it’s also arguably the most exciting, intense and productive form of fishing for trophy catfish.
Noodling is fishing by hand. In its most common application, the noodler reaches into an undercut bank or other underwater structure and grabs the fish, usually a catfish or related species.
While hand fishing was practiced in various forms by Indigenous peoples around the world and has been popular in the southern U.S. for decades, it wasn’t legal in Wisconsin until 2020.
It’s starting to catch on. And Anderson, who uses his “Yankee Noodling” social media sites to spread his passion, is the state’s leading ambassador for hand fishing.
Anderson, 35, is a pediatrician who grew up in Eau Claire and earned engineering and medical doctor degrees from UW-Madison.
Though he enjoyed hook-and-line fishing, he had never noodled until he moved to Dallas in 2017 for a medical residency at the University of Texas Southwestern.
To help relax in his time away from the hospital, Anderson began to fish at Lake Tawakoni, a 37,879-acre reservoir about 50 miles east of Dallas. Known as the “Catfish Capital of Texas,” the lake features 225 miles of shoreline and is a premier destination for boating, fishing, swimming and camping.
As he made friends in the area and learned more about catching blue and flathead catfish by normal hook-and-line and jug fishing, he eventually was invited to try noodling.
On the first noodling trip, his friend caught a 15-pound flathead, the biggest catfish Anderson had ever seen.
The outing was also memorable when Anderson let out a shriek and lost a glove when a different catfish bit his hand. And though he said the experience scared him, he also felt drawn to it.
“Part of the appeal was challenging myself mentally to overcome that fear,” Anderson said.
Anderson also remembers his new Texas fishing partners serving up a friendly admonition: if he ever squealed like that again he wouldn’t be invited back.
Anderson went back many more times and learned to love it.
“As soon as I was hooked on noodling I was (at Lake Tawakoni) every weekend I had off work,” Anderson said.
After completing his residency, Anderson moved back to Wisconsin in 2020 and started work as a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital in Neenah.
He continued to make annual noodling trips to Texas. Then in 2025 he started to seriously explore noodling in his home state.
Noodling was legalized March 1, 2020, in Wisconsin.
The regulations allow it only for catfish and bullhead species. The season is June 1 to Aug. 31.
To partake, anglers must purchase a Wisconsin general fishing license. Fish can only be taken by hand and the use of SCUBA or snorkle gear is prohibited.
Fish caught by noodling are eligible for recognition in the “alternate methods” category of the Wisconsin fish records program kept by the Department of Natural Resources.
The first hand catch record was entered in 2021, a 34-pound flathead caught on the Waupaca River in Waupaca County.
It was topped by a 47-pounder caught in 2024 on the Rock River in Jefferson County.
And last year, as Anderson got more active in noodling in his home state, he set the bar higher three times, the last with a 54.85-pound flathead caught Aug. 20, 2025, on the Wisconsin River in Wood County.
He has invested dozens of outings to scout noodling spots in the state, including major rivers and lakes and Green Bay.
For shelter, ambush sites and spawning, flathead catfish use natural burrows, tree roots and undercut banks as well as spaces in sea walls, wing dams and boat launches.
The species is predatory and typically only caught on live bait. In noodling, that includes a human hand or foot.
“They have a tendency to snap at you,” Anderson said. “Once they figure out they can’t eat you, they let go. Then it’s up to you to get a hold of them.”
Anderson and I met in April when I was researching an article about the 2025 Wisconsin fish records.
He invited me to join him this summer on a noodling outing. We made it happen June 29.
I’ve been privileged to do many, many things in the Wisconsin outdoors. But I never dreamed I’d be noodling in my home state.
I had questions, lots of questions.
For example: What about snapping turtles?
Since his fingers are critical to his work as a physician, including surgery, Anderson has added credibility when he says noodling is relatively safe.
But he also says the “risk is not zero.”
We wore wetsuits, work gloves and water shoes or booties.
Anderson took me to a stretch of river he knows well and asked not to identify due to risk of overfishing. His standard practice is to release all of his noodling catches.
Flathead catfish are the largest member of the catfish and bullhead family in Wisconsin, including commercial catches of flatheads of more than 100 pounds on the Mississippi River, according to “Fishes of Wisconsin” by George Becker.
Flatheads are sometimes called the “candy bar” attesting to the superb flavor and texture of its flesh, Becker wrote.
The species doesn’t have teeth but does have a sandpaper-like tooth patch on the upper jaw with “elongate lateral backward extensions,” according to Becker. They also have a pectoral fin spine with teeth pointing toward the tip.
Flatheads are also important and notable as being hosts for larvae of a number of freshwater mussels.
The water was refreshing June 29 as the air temperature rose into the 90s. But as the big flathead clamped on my foot, there was electricity in the river, too.
Once we knew a fish was home, Anderson instructed me to spread my body as wide as possible to keep it from escaping.
Seconds later it swam to his side of the opening and like Robin Yount handling a one-hopper he gloved it.
The bank vibrated again as the fish swiped its tail back and forth in the hole and Anderson worked to get a secure hold with both hands.
He then pulled it out and stood with a writhing, massive catfish in his arms.
It was the only fish we weighed and measured that day. It tipped the scale at 46.7 pounds, was 44 inches long and had a 30-inch girth.
Our next stop was a similar undercut bank and this time the fish flushed in my direction. With the fish blocked, Anderson had me put my right hand in its mouth and grab it by the jaw with my left.
Yes, it’s a little disconcerting to put your hand in the gaping mouth of a 40-pound fish. But it works. It also helps avoid touching the gills.
I’ve fished for catfish in Wisconsin many times over the years, including all-night outings on the Wolf River, and caught dozens of flatheads. Until this noodling outing, I had never caught one heavier than 20 pounds.
In fact, the largest Wisconsin fish I had caught were a 70-pound lake sturgeon, followed by a 32-pound chinook salmon and an estimated 30-pound muskellunge.
In four hours of noodling I caught two flatheads of at least 40 pounds. Both were “personal bests.”
Anderson landed five other flatheads, as well as two channel catfish (each about 8 pounds).
“Sorry it’s so slow,” Anderson said with a grin.
We saw a pontoon boat on the same stretch of river but no anglers. And definitely no other noodlers.
With his experience, Anderson knows by feel if an undercut bank or other spot is likely to hold flatheads. A firm opening is good, meaning the fish have packed it down.
He capped the outing by pulling two flatheads by himself out of a hole. He estimated the fish weighed 40 and 30 pounds, respectively.
It was the first time in his noodling career he caught two fish of such size out of one hole.
Over four hours I had seen the eight largest flatheads in Wisconsin in my life, all caught by hand. The fish were big and wild and beautiful and all were released to hopefully have a successful spawning season.
To the pleasure of my host, one even bit me.
“That’s the start,” Anderson said as we motored back to the boat landing. “That’s an unforgettable experience and if you’re like me and many others I know, you’ll be back. There’s nothing else like it.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Smith: Yankee Noodler shares passion for hand fishing in Wisconsin
Reporting by Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
