State Conservation Officer Dave Tierney received a call on the Turn-In-Poachers hotline regarding a Harlan Tribune article featuring a photo of a man holding a 30-pound flathead catfish that he caught “noodling,” which is a method of using your hands to catch fish.
Finstad admitted to wrestling a 30-pound catfish on the banks of the Nishnabotna River near Harlan, and was quoted in the paper saying “It was tough work, and wrestling him took about 15 minutes.”
Conservation officers have been seeing an increase in TIP calls of people hand fishing over the past year. Although popular on reality TV shows, “noodling” or “hillbilly hand fishin” is illegal in Iowa.
State Conservation Officer Richard Price, who assisted in the investigation, located Finstad in the Shelby County Jail where he had been arrested the previous night for possession of burglary tools.
The Harlan Police Department and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department assisted in the investigation.
8 thoughts on “Iowa Man Charged with Hand Fishing”
He is my father
Article is almost three years old.
REALLY??? Just another fundraiser for the government. What ever happened to a warning or common sense. But it is ok to shoot little mourning doves.
i wonder if there is a saying…”The lord giveth..and the government taketh away.”
I’m no expert, but I would think that It takes way more skill to catch fish by hand. Rather than using fancy lures, stink bate, bobbers, poles, and those under water fish finder radar thingys…But yet, this guy gets punished for doing it the hard way?
This is like the oldest of the old school ways to catch a fish…but yet, he’s a criminal?
That would be like getting a fine for riding a horse instead of driving a car.
I would guess that he didn’t have a fishing license and thats the real problem….
So much for living off the land that god provided…
Who provided what?
If a man can catch a 30lb catfish by hand then i’d say that’s pretty fair sport. It’s funny to me how the DNR own all the wildlife until they cause property damage to citizens. Now, this isn’t obviously the case with catfish but take whitetail deer for instance. The DNR “own” the deer and you must pay to hunt them. BUT if the IDNR’s deer jump out in the middle of the road and kill your car…it’s not the DNR that is responsible…all of the sudden it’s an “act of god”. I can’t believe we want to charge this guy with a crime for being a fair sport and taking it BY HAND. If he was fishing with a pole and line then fine…but BY HAND. Give me a break.
Might that be some “hillbilly handfishin’ ?