Tough breed!
A 19-year-old woman has won top honors at the 14th Annual Okie Noodling Festival in Oklahoma, bringing a 72-pound flathead catfish on stage to claim victory reports The Daily Mail.
Lucy Millsap was the first woman in the history of the competition to win, after she saw off 200 competitors to win first place and $1500 in the 'Big Fish' category.
Noodling is a sport most popular in the southern states of the U.S. in which flathead catfish are caught by hand.
The method is daring: noodlers wave their arms around in a catfish hole. If all goes according to plan, the fish will latch onto the arm as a defensive measure and the noodler can bring the fish in. The arm-as-bait method means the sport isn't for the faint hearted.
According to NewsOK, Millsap's chosen sport has landed her in the hospital numerous times, but so far all her fingers are intact.
'My dad asked me if I wanted to fish in the women's division,' Millsap, who's been noodling since she was five, told the paper. 'I said, "Heck no." I don't want to fish in the women's division. I want to beat the men.'
Millsap is part of an all-female noodling collective called the Bare Knuckle Babes (she's May in their annual calendar).
It was the Texan former high school cheerleader's first competition. According to NewsOK, she caught the 72-pound catfish in Lake Texoma at 3am the morning of the competition, before driving three hours to Wacker Park in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, with the live fish in the back of her truck.
The competition is the brainchild of Moore native and filmmaker Bradley Beesley, who expected the inaugural Okie Noodling Festival to be the last.
More here
0 comments:
Post a Comment