guggling
Maybe they call it noodeling in Oklahoma. Far as I ever knew, the good old English word for fishing with your fingers is guggling. Back in the stone ages, when I was a lad, we guggled trout, up at our fave camping spot other side of Forest Home in the San Berdoo mountains. You lay on a tree root or some such, where there's a likely fish hole under the bank. You dangle your hands in the water until they freeze & prune up. You wiggle your fingers slow like they might be worms. Eventually, even a trout gets curious. Comes, nips, speeds away. Comes back, nips, speeds away. Once you get one to where he will tolerate you petting him (cause every critter on Earth seems to like human hands petting), you may have exactly one chance to snag him in the gills. Takes patience; but it works. Believe it or not. I've eaten them.
I've never done catfish, tho. Why someone would want o eat a crap slurping bottom feeder... but then, people go nutso for blue crabs, so...
Unmitigated risk aversion is the new Puritanism; complete with witch hunts funny outfits and humorless preachers thundering doom. The Deity is Safety; Satan is a Lawyer; but the object is the same: to suck the life out of life and tell you how to live it.
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