The Sealock Perspective
By Jason Sealock

I don't call myself an expert at grabbin, hoggin, noodlin or whatever name you give to the fine art of jerking giant catfish out of deep dark holes in the banks of your dirtiest lake or river. But I can say that I've found a certain level of enjoyment after getting my first lesson from the now passed away legendary grabbler himself, Bob Henderson last summer in Greenwood, Miss. The stories I've shared with people always seem to brighten their day and makes me smile with a swell of pride and sigh of relief that things worked out the way they did.

Since returning to Kentucky after our successful Yazoo River outing, which involved my uprooting of a 35-pound blue cat from her comfortable barrel and my partner in crime, Will Brantley's successful removal of a 30-pound flathead from a deeper box, all we talked about for two months was getting our own boxes out in Kentucky Lake.

Well, Will set out eight boxes this winter, but, as does every year, the heavy rains in Western Kentucky altered the Tennessee River impoundment's landscape, and all but one box was washed away. Wilbur of course reached into the one box in early June and successfully noodled out his first Kentucky Lake catfish.

Since then Will has been able to spend countless weekends honing his skills and developing an improved system for finding and removing catfish from their comfortable holes while I've been travelling from one end of the country to the other. In fact in the span of 4 weeks I travelled from Kentucky to Pennsylvania to Kentucky to North Dakota to Kentucky and then to New York and back to Kentucky. Having to listen all the while about how Will has been jerking 10-, 20- and even 45-pound monsters from Kentucky Lake.

Well there is only a small season when the catfish are really using the holes to nest, and that, I was afraid, was over by now. But being the buddy he is, Will agreed to give it a go with me and another co-worker (who shall remain nameless until said time). Will probably figured he'd have his way with me since he's well versed by now in the dark arts of grabblin on Kentucky Lake. I was actually just hoping we'd find one catfish between the three of us. Sort of managing my expectations if you will.

We set out on a bank close to the ramp we launched from, and we started probing holes with our feet. Will explained about how he had found some productive areas that seem to hold cats better than others, while I coaxed our co-worker along. He'd never been before, and I talked like I was a seasoned veteran having wrestled a whopping one catfish from its nest in as many tries.

Will definitely has the experience on me, as he's been at this for the better part of 10 trips while I just have the one. But, as far as I was concerned (and, more importantly, my ego, who can't accept not being the best at everything), Will and I had the exact same success rate in trips we'd been on together grabbing catfish. One a piece on one trip. So I judged us "even-steven" until this trip.

We found a small catfish in a hole. Well I should say Will did since our co-worker had checked the hole but obviously not deep enough because he didn't get bit and Will did only seconds later. Will likes to use the goggles so he can see, albeit only a little, while he's down there probing. I on the other hand want to be totally shocked when that fish clamps down. I'll say that's the more manly way to do it. Yeah that sounds better.

After messing with that small 10-12 pounder without much success, Will surfaced saying that he saw, with his trusty goggles of course, that the catfish had darted out. So, we moved down to another bank where Will had wrestled a monster 45 pound flathead weeks before. Again we met with no luck. After a brief period of Will being neighborly and unhooking a bank angler's worm that had gotten lodged in the rocks we were probing, we moved onto another spot where Will had lost a big fish a week before.

Will reached in there and got bit. I went in and I got bit. We then tried to get our co-worker hooked up but he for some odd reason wasn't able to get bit or feel the fish like Will and I were. Now I'm not making an accusations. Just merely an observation. As Bob told us, "If you can't find the hole or the fish it's because you DON'T WANT TO FIND THE FISH."

By this time, what I've quickly realized is I don't swim like the fish I once used to. Growing up in Florida and spending nearly every waking moment outside of school and church fishing or surfing, I really could swim like a fish. I also quickly realized, I can't hold my breath as long as I once could, and Will now holds a decisive advantage on me, in that he could hold his breath 10 or 15 seconds longer than me -- a skill that is paramount to wrestling a big catfish to the surface.

The fish bit me again but for some odd reason I had my hand sideways as I swished through there. Will went in after me and a great commotion ensued. I, in fact, debated for what seemed like 20 seconds over whether to pull Will free because I could see him clear as day thrashing about back and forth like a rag doll under the surface. As I reached into the water to grab his arms he surfaced with a giant flathead in hand. We pulled the boat over and Will slam dunked a 29-pound flathead into the jon boat with a booming thud.

I was elated that he got such a good one, and I was disheartened - nah scratch that - I was PISSED that he got that big fish out. That was my fish. He had bit me once, and I was just out of position. It looked smaller then the ones we had gotten in Mississippi, but it had a huge belly on it. It weighed 29-10 on his Berkley scale and the neighbors came down for a close inspection.

Part of the fun in grabbin' is the crowd factor. Whether it's your friends that go with you or the land owners who see you wrestling around on their banks. Whether they care anything about fishing or not, they always seem awstruck and inspired by what takes place out there, and for some reason, I get a real kick out of that.

So Will is the hero, now. I gotta get the camera out and do some "work" documenting his catch. So now I'm getting more upset about being on camera duty. The only time we smallmouth fished together, he had me on camera and net duty for 30 minutes while he smashed a 4-15 smallmouth and several mid 4-pound smallmouth on Lake Erie. I had a giant fish on that he didn't net and the whole trip seems to be daily fodder for Will to lob over into my office. Needless to say, he and I are a bit competitive about our fish.

So we release the big cat to go and play another day, and we're back in transit again. I'm struggling with cramping issues in my legs, yet another reminder about how old I'm getting. But we get to the next spot, and I'm torn between my desire to welcome another co-worker into the grabbin' fold and my own desire to catch one by hand again this year before the window of opportunity passes. I let our co-worker have first crack at the fish.

Will has our co-worker messing with a small one in another hole when Will suddenly resurfaces up the bank a bit shouting, "Screw that one! There's a giant in here!" I'm in the water at this point thinking, 'screw that, we're not losing this one, Gator.'

Our co-worker goes down and comes back up with the "I didn't feel anything" response. I immediately went down and swished far and wide in this 5-foot-deep hole, finally feeling the big fish on the left side way back in there. I ran my hand for what felt like 3 feet never feeling a head or a tail.

"He's in there, and he's a giant," I said excitedly. Again our co-worker can't find him. Will and I decide maybe one of us can corral him and the others can come in and try to grab him. Will goes down first and now our co-worker is feeling the fish swim off each time he goes under. I step into the middle of it and on my first swish the fish bites my thumb. HARD! I turn my fingers and get him by the bottom jaw. Problem is I came in on the shallow side of the hole and there is a large rock in the middle. I can't get the fish to fit through there and again my shallow air is depleted. So I let go and give the fish a shove back into the cave.

"Damnit! I had him but I couldn't get him out on that side." By this time I detect that Will, in his infinite catfish ability, is getting a little perturbed that we mere mortals can't pull this little cat out and he's having to hand hold it for us. While I do readily admit that Will shares a bit more experience with things of awful and foul nature, I'll never admit he's more manly than me. By god if I didn't have a leg cramp and could hold my breath more than 15 seconds then I'd be all over this thing.

Each time we go down, I'm getting his head but can't pry his mouth open. He's not biting us at all anymore. On the final attempt Will has him good by the bottom of one gill and I'm in there now as well. I've got a hand behind each gill and Will is free so I'm moving the fish to the opening.

Expecting a fight to make a 50 pound fish fit through a 20 pound hole, I rare back and burst out of there with all my might. I've been out of breath for 10 seconds now but for some reason when you have a good hold on a big cat, you magically have enough breath to get the job done. So the next thing I know, the cat is completely through the hole. He didn't even scratch the sides. I've got it up to my chest and it's head is as wide as my pecs. I'm sort of dazed by the fact that he didn't fight me and he fit so easily through the hole. I turn to see where the boat is and the fish thrashes its head once to the side, and is completely free of my grip.

"DAMN!" I slapped the water with a slimy gloved hand. "I can't believe that just happened." In one fail swoop the fish is gone. That one fish would have made me content for a full 12 months. That one fish would have put me back to even with Will (remember I'm only counting trips we've fished together). That one fish would have properly restored any little bit of manhood that had been lost at the hands of a poor net job on a 5 1/2 pound smallmouth. But no. I've got nothing.

We decide to load up and try a few spots on Barkley Lake so that we can salvage the day and get our new co-worker a shot at one last cat. We hit a small bay and low and behold he checks a hole and finds nothing. Seconds later Will surfaces, saying, "Well you didn't look real hard, because he's in there."

I'm basically standing on top of the hole in chest deep water and our co-worker is going under. I feel a THUD and the co-worker pops up. "He's in there. He's mine." A renewed sense of purpose has been restored. For the first time he looks completely unphased. He goes back under and I'm feeling all kinds of thumping and I can hear the fish hitting the top of the rocks. Moments later he's to the surface with our co-worker lurching him out of the water to show off his catch. "NO!", we yell. Catfish get real upset when you pull them out of their holes, but not half as upset as they get when you pull them out of the water.

He gets the fish in a death grip, and Will grabs his arm and walks him to the bank where he can stand up and get out of the water. A 12 pound, 8 ounce flathead is on the arm of our newest member of the Kentucky Lake Grabblers Association. After posing for his trophy photos, we offer the fish up to a group of local anglers preparing to launch for an afternoon of fishing.

"This is great," one angler says. "We'll tell everyone we caught this thing right off the bank before we even launched the boat."

See what I mean about sense of pride generated by one catfish caught by hand? Okay so that's a little misplaced in this case, but still you get my drift. These guys were as excited as we were about that catfish.

So here I sit thinking of the colorful and fun ways Will can find to ridicule me about catching a bigger catfish than me. Unfortunately I'm probably going to have to listen to it for another 11 months. I guess I'll have to remind him about how many big catfish he's lost (as many or more than he's caught). And then I'll be reminded about the three smallmouths he's caught that are bigger than mine.

Maybe he'll just arm wrestle me for my manhood back.

The Brantley Perspective
By Will Brantley

Learning to catch catfish by hand was sort of a milestone in my life. I never was considered a particularly tough guy growing up. I was always known as one who spent a lot of time hunting and fishing, but I had a letter in cross-country and was good at English. Being a tough guy who was exceptional at something others were afraid to do didn't seem in the cards for me.

That all changed after Jason Sealock and I learned to hand-grab flatheads in Mississippi's Yazoo River. After doing that, and seeing just how cool catching one of those big bastards was, I told myself: "Self, you'll never be satisfied if you don't learn how to noodle catfish from your home waters." I do, after all, take pride in all things vulgar and offensive. If there is a vulgar fishing method, hand-
grabbing catfish is probably it.

I feel fortunate that Kentucky is one of only a few states where handfishing is a legal practice. I know in many other states, it's have outlawed on the grounds that it's unsporting. Now, let's think about this. Fishing with your bare hands is unsporting? I've come to the conclusion that to these people, unsporting is a code word for: I'm just too big of a pussy to try it myself.



I'd had considerable success with hand-grabbing on Kentucky Lake for the year. My buddies and I had caught several big flatheads. The two largest weighed 40 and 45 pounds. Yes, I caught them both. Sealock and another co-worker, whose name we'll just keep to ourselves for now (but it wasn't any member of Heavygator.com), had been on the road quite a bit, but they found a day to join me in early July, just as the cats were finishing up their little whisker-making chores for the year.

It was a hot son of a gun first thing that morning, so getting in the water was a welcome respite from heat hot enough to make a whore blush. Our co-worker said he was really wanting to catch a flathead, if anything to prove another co-worker that there now was only one person in our office too tender to reach into an underwater catfish lair.

So after pulling up to the first hole, one I'd proudly staked out and pulled several catfish from over the course of the previous month, our co-worker stood in neck-deep water, doing a considerable amount of labored breathing. I know what it feels like to be preparing to reach into your first-ever catfish hole, with no idea of what manner of awfulness is lurking inside. But in world in hand grabbing, there is no better encouragement than ridicule and cajoling. "Can't breath 'em out of there, buddy," Sealock and I chuckled.

He dove under, bubbles bursting on the surface. When he came up, he said nothing was inside. I didn't necessarily doubt him, but I'd spent considerable time exploring that hole myself. It's a big hole, one that tends to hold several fish. I dove under, swept around and at first, didn't think anything was inside. But then something latched down on my right arm and immediately drew some bloody memories.

Our co-worker and Sealock eyed the ring-shaped bite mark on my arm. Nothing will get a grabber's blood pumping quite like a big catfish bite seething with infectious bacteria. Our co-worker dove under and made another sweep, but that small fish had evidently decided to exit the premises or move into the nether region of the hole. We decided to move on to other areas to see what else we could piss off (and I'll end a sentence in a preposition any time I want - this is my damn story).

Well, it was on up the lake then to some of my other chosen haunts. As I said, it was late in the year, and most of the holes that usually hold fish were barren. Only the big, dish-shaped abandoned nests could be felt. But one hole, one that had held a large flathead that escaped only one week before, definitely had my attention. We pulled up to it and I prepared to check it myself.

I have no problem admitting I was a little nervous. The biggest fish of the year had come from this particular hole. In the process of grabbing him, that fish had unleashed hell on my arm, shredding away plenty of flesh up to the elbow, and I've got some battle scars to prove it.

"I'm a little nervous on this one," I said with a laugh. I could tell that gave our co-worker lots of confidence. But being the ferocious badass that he is, Sealock took it as an invitation to jump in.

"I'll grab him," he said. "He doesn't scare me."

So, like a sinking submarine with a bubbling leak, Sealock disappeared below the surface and reached into the hole. Hearing the flathead inside take offense to his Neanderthal arm reaching into its nest wasn't difficult. The flathead latched down and scared Sealock so bad that he had no choice but to return to the surface.

"Son of a bitch," Sealock said at the surface. "I missed him."
"Of course you missed him," I replied. "I expected nothing less."
Grabbling finds normally extremely homophobic men contorting themselves in ways they wouldn't be contorted in other places.

Sealock blocked the hole with his feet whilst I dove in next to his waist and reached into it with my right hand. I had a jersey glove on, which was partially covering a season's worth of catfish wounds that were beginning to scab over nicely. But, as it turns out, the glove wouldn't be of much help. The big flathead grabbed my hand and when I grabbed its jaw, my glove fell off right into its mouth. Letting go, even as my hand was being pulverized, just wasn't an option. I am, after all, better at grabbling than Sealock.

Well, pulling an open-mouthed flathead with a jaw span of 15 inches through a hole that's 12 inches just doesn't work too well. I yanked on that sucker, but couldn't get him through the hole where my arms were. Ultimately, I had to work him down around Sealock's ankles to get him out. Sealock evidently thought I was drowning as the catfish thrashed my muscled 150-pound frame about, but I wasn't drowning too bad. I had a good 25 seconds before things went really dark. I finally dragged the slimy sucker out and came to the surface.

Sealock was throwing a bitching fit when I threw the 29-10 flatty in the boat. "Man, wish I'd have grabbed that." But of course, he didn't, and I did, and I let him know about it. But it's not like he didn't get another chance. We snapped some pictures and eased the big guy back into the water. He stuck his middle fin up at us as he swam away.

As I said, Sealock got another chance. At the very next hole we pulled up to, I had a good idea there might be some cats inside. This was a series of several holes in succession, so our co-worker was back in the water, panting like a mating bird dog with asthma before he went under.

"No fish," he said after checking the first hole. Easing on down to the next one, the report was the same. "Nah, nothing in there." The last hole in the succession did, however, house a small but very ill-tempered flathead, one I'd messed with on a couple of occasions but wasn't able to get because his hole was only about as big around as a softball at the entrance. It widened out to about the size of a soccer ball in the back. You could reach in up to your shoulder, but it was tight and narrow - not real conducive for hand-moving dexterity. That was just the way this little devil liked it. He'd gladly bite anything that even acted like it was reaching into that hole. Our co-worker repeatedly messed with him. While he did, I decided to "double check" some of the other holes.

Now, I've grabbed several fish, and those in the 40-pound range have never been hard to notice. But alas, one had slipped by our grabbling newcomer. I can understand, as the critter had made a dwelling for itself in a hole that I could reach into shoulder deep and just get my face inside of. With my arm fully outstretched, I could just feel down his slimy flanks in the back. He wasn't a mean fish. Actually, he was pretty complacent. I'd touch him and he'd gently move away, as if to say, "Not now. I'm sleeping."

Well, Sealock and our co-worker trudged back up to me, where we proceeded to make some 25 team-effort dives. I wanted them to catch this one, but I'd had a little more experience with this hole and I knew it was a tough one to grab from. It was really deep. So, they'd stand next to me with their feet in the hole while I'd dive in and grab the fish by a tail, a gill plate or fin and drag him up close.

When I had him within a few inches of the hole (and my face) I'd grab whoever's ankle was closest to come down and assist. This would usually result in them blatantly slapping the big flathead in the face and it would retreat back into its hole.

But finally, when I had a decent grip on it myself, Sealock lumbered in and took over with his brutish arms. He wormed his way into the fish's gills, and then it began to get a little more lively.

Now, earlier in the day, I thought that I'd made plain that even a big man can't contain a big flathead by holding it just by the gills. You've almost got to have a hand through the mouth and out a gill to subdue one. Make no mistake - they're better at fighting in the water than you are, and they can sure as hell hold their breath a lot longer. But that Sealock is a hard-headed sucker. He came to the surface and announced: "I've got him…dammit!" All we got to see of the flathead, which was one of the biggest of the year, was a dark flash on the surface as it boiled out of Sealock's hands and out into the Tennessee River channel.

So that was that. The next few holes I had in mind required a little drive down the road to the Lake Barkley side. There were a few no-show holes before we came to the last spot I had in mind. It too was a fairly small hole, and our co-worker submerged himself (again, after considerable breathing) to check things out. He came up with the report: "Nope, nothing there."

So I made a dive. And at first, I thought nothing was there myself. But a few rocks had been moved about since the last time I'd checked the hole. I cleared some of them out to get a better reach and came up for a refreshing breath before making another dive. I reached in as far as I could and a nice flathead latched down on my hand. God, I love that feeling. Big bass thump jigs. Big stripers nail topwater spooks. Big walleyes have a lust for crawler harnesses. And big flatheads really like ole Wilbur T.'s hand.

Well, I wasn't going to grab this sucker. We ridiculed our co-worker to where he had no choice but to dive in and grab the fish. Sure enough, he got bit. We could hear it from the surface. Sealock grinned and I chuckled. Our co-worker came to the surface with a sudden change of heart. He was pissed. "He's mine!"

This flathead was destined for a very miserable few minutes. Our co-worker disappeared again, legs kicking and bubbles boiling, and we again heard the thump. But this time, there was no surfacing, at least not right away. He was down there just long enough to whip that fish's ass and drag him from the hole. When he came up, it was all business. A 13-pound flathead was thrashing the surface on the end of his arm.

"Bear hug that sonuvabitch!" I shouted. He did. I grabbed him by the arm and towed the whole thrashing mess to the bank as Sealock ran to get his camera. The pictures prove it.

You can say anything you want to say about a grabbler. They're unethical. They're redneck. They're crazy. They have a creepy affliction for enjoying bodily harm. But you can't say they don't enjoy manly things. We stood there with that flathead, snapping pictures, laughing and expelling gas from all orifices and beating our chests as the local rod and reel anglers gathered around us with the usual bunch of questions. We gave the catfish away to some guys heading out with a tub of stinkbait, and we could hear them concocting lies amongst themselves as they putted out across the lake. Lies would be easier to explain than the truth.