Hannah Barron hand grabs monster cats
Published 1:47 pm Thursday, May 25, 2017
- Hannah Barron displays a couple of mean blue cats she caught while hand grabbing.
Hannah Barron dove underwater and felt a big catfish and promptly thrust her hand into the massive catfish’s mouth, and the battle was on. The enraged flathead catfish spun her around and swam about 10 feet underwater.
“All I could think about was just hold on, just hold on,” Barron said. “Don’t let that fish go no matter what. You don’t really have time to think until you’re running out of air, and then you think, ‘uh oh, I gotta get up and get some air.’ ”
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“He just straight left here with me holding on, and I went under about 10 feet before I popped up,” Barron said. “My dad was looking for me, and I popped up with the fish. That’s the one that put the scar on me. He was just a mean one.”
As the fish tried to twist and spin to break her grip, the 5-foot tall, 115-pound young college student finally got traction. Though relatively small when it comes to hand grabbing, this lady is a force to be reckoned with, and she takes care of business.
“I run my arm all the way down into the fish and grab some guts,” Barron said. “And then I hang on for dear life!”
“I finally dug my feet into the bottom and pushed up and broke the surface,” Barron said. “I was too impatient to jump in there and tangle with that cat so I didn’t take time to put on my glove and he got me good. I came out of the water with blood running down my arm, and I thought it was his blood, but when I finally got my arm out of his mouth I realized he’d really scraped me good.”
While this young lady likes to fish and hunt, she enjoys hand grabbing monster catfish the most, and she’s been doing that for the last five years of her young life.
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“About five years ago a game warden, Brad Gavins, moved down beside us, and he came over one day and said, ‘Y’all want to go noodling?’ ” Barron said. “I said ‘Heck yeah!’ ” Hannah was 15 years old when she made her first hand grabbing trip with Gavins and her dad, Jeff Barron, and she’s never looked back.
While Barron does like to fish, it’s become harder to hold a rod and reel in her hand now that she’s tasted a bit of hand grabbing, or “noodling” as she calls it.
“I might spend several hours fishing to catch a nice bass, but you can catch a monster flathead or blue cat in 15 to 20 minutes if you hit the right hole and that fish is in there,” Barron said.
While she was a bit unsure of going under and sticking her arm into a hole at first, it only took one bite from a big catfish to set her on fire.
“It’s an adrenalin rush, I reckon,” Barron said. “Cause you gotta be a certain kinda crazy to love it, and we love it if you go down there wanting something to bite you.”
“They’ll tear your arm up if you ain’t got that welding sleeve on,” Barron said. “I’ve got the scars from some of those monster blue cats to prove it, too. Sometimes those mean blues will spin and twist and tear that sleeve or glove off, and they’ll hurt you. And they bite 10 times harder than a flathead cat.”
Though it may be hard for some to believe that a young lady would enjoy getting bit and wrestling with catfish almost as long as she is tall, Barron really relishes the opportunity and is passionate about it, no less. After tangling and whipping one ornery 35-pound flathead cat that they had on video, they posted it to Facebook and Instagram and it went viral with more than 20 million views at last count.
Monster cats
“Actually the smaller blue cats are harder to hold onto because their mouths are so small that I can’t really get a good hold on them, and they’ll twist off sometime,” Barron said. “But those monster cats from 30 to 50 pounds plus are the ones that are really fun.”
“I’ve had quite a few of the big ones spin me around and pull me a ways underwater, and occasionally I’ll lose one but not very often,” Barron said. “It’s really an adrenalin rush when I get hold of a monster catfish, and we struggle against each other. And when we’re through I get to eat them, too.”
When it comes to hand grabbing catfish Hannah Barron thinks everyone should give it a try if they take a notion.
“If you want to do it then don’t be scared to try it,” Barron said. “Everybody says what if you grab something besides a catfish. Well, ain’t nothing going to be in that hole but a catfish because he’s meaner than any other animal in that lake or river.
“The first time we went, a boy went under first and he came up holding one with one hand, a 70 pound blue cat and that cat started twisting and spun his arm around and took all the hide of the top of his hand and got away,” Barron said. “It was really exciting so I thought I’d try it myself.”
After five years of wrestling catfish Barron is hooked on hand grabbling and has caught several more than 50 pounds and she still gets an adrenaline rush every time one of those monster cats clamps down on her arm.
Check out Hannah Barron on Facebook at Hannah Barron Outdoors and on Instagram at HannahBarron96.
Call Mike Giles at 601-917-3898 or email mikegiles18@comcast.net.