Craziest Sport in "The South" - 'Nothing like adrenaline rush when 50 pound cat bites
Kevin Tate | Daily Journal Big catfish are carried to the stage every year at the North Mississippi Grabbling Tournament, including one state-record cat that topped 80 pounds.
Posted on June 3, 2016 by Daily Journal in Outdoors, Sports
By Kevin Tate
Outdoors Writer
Sardis Lake, MS
In addition to reaching for the mouths of some of the biggest catfish ever caught in the state, organizers of the North Mississippi Grabbling Tournament are reaching for the hands of local veterans who could use some help returning to the freedoms they fought to preserve.
In its fifth year, the North Mississippi Grabbling Tournament will weigh in at the stage and picnic area at Engineer Point on Sardis Lake from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. June 11. Teams from far and wide will fish their home waters and present the three largest examples of their catch. The picnic area has a large, glass-sided holding tank that will be filled and used to display some of the day’s most outstanding specimens, all of which must arrive at the weigh-in alive to be recognized.
The teams have each paid a $100 entry fee, and that pot will be divided among the day’s top three finishers. There will also be a raffle for an AR-15 and a wide variety of other prizes, as well as t-shirts for sale as well. There are plans to have a bouncy house for the youngsters and live entertainment for the crowd. Revenue from the raffle and other efforts will go to recognize and help four area veterans.
The grabbling tournament and its excitement lies close to the heart of Brion Whitten, the event’s founder, but the opportunity to help local veterans comes straight from his soul.
“I joined the Marines in December of 2002 and served through 2008,” Whitten, now with the Oxford Fire Department, said. “Beyond having no way to understand what soldiers who’ve served overseas have been through, after you’ve been out of the service for so long, people forget that you’ve even been in the military. It’s very difficult to transform from a war life back to a normal life.”
A humble thanks
The annual grabbling tournament has always operated with an eye toward helping veterans. In the past, it has made contributions to national groups operating on that mission. Last year, organizers decided to help someone themselves directly, and close to home. They raised $1,500 for one local man in 2015, and this year hope to raise $2,500 each for four.
“We’re going to ask them to give their stories on stage so people can get an idea what so many guys go through,” Whitten said. “We want them to tell their stories and be recognized. More than anything, we want them to understand we’re not going to forget about them.”
The group is still gathering raffle items, and all donations are welcome. Whitten can be reached through the tournament’s website, www.msgrabbling.com.
A life’s passion
Helping his fellow veterans and promoting the collection of big catfish by hand unites two of Whitten’s chief passions. His grabbling career began at age 15.
“It took one fish over into the boat and I was hooked,” he said. “I’ve been building boxes and been into it ever since.”
Flathead catfish prefer to eat live baitfish, crawfish and other living aquatic critters, and they tend to hide out in submerged stumps, rotten logs and other similar structure that give them both cover and hunting opportunities. Dedicated hand fishermen build box-like structures that replicate this habitat and sink them in likely spots.
We generally build our boxes out of sweet gum or rough cut oak,” Whitten said. “We’ll build a box four feet wide, five feet long and at least 16 inches deep. Then we’ll cut a hole out 10 to 14 inches across on one end.”
They build the box with one long side open, then place the box on the lake or creek bottom with that open side down. They anchor the box in place with sandbags along the top, then let the big fishes’ instincts do the rest.
“We leave the bottom side open to the ground so the fish can whoop out the mud and make it as big as they want,” he said.
Hands on
Fish are harvested from the box by hand. Through water whose clarity is such that you can’t see your hand in front of your face, the box’s owner reaches in through the hole in the end that was cut to permit entry to the fish, then manually gains control of whatever may be in there, a process aided by the fact the fish tend to attempt both fight and flight at the same time.
“The adrenaline rush, when a 40 or 50 pound cat bites you on the hand and goes to jerking back and forth like a dog on a bone, there’s nothing like it,” Whitten said, “nothing like it at all.”