Assembling a noodle for catching catfish and bowfin
Kevin Felts 06.11.13
In this article I’ll show you how to make noodles for catching catfish and bowfin (aka grinnell).
Bill of materials:
- Foam pool noodle
- 3/4 inch PVC pipe
- 3/4 inch PVC pipe cap
- Tape measure
- Marker – pen, pencil, sharpie
- File or sand paper
- PVC glue
- Trotline string
- Lighter (for burning end of trotline string)
- Electric drill
- 5/16 drill bit
- Cable tie (optional)
- Circle hooks
- 5 gallon bucket, my 5 gallon buckets are 13.25 inches tall
- Various size weights (optional)
- Colored duct tape (some states require noodles to be a certain color)
Assembly
Buy a foam pool noodle: These are usually sold by the big box-marts during the summer months. The noodles I bought are called “funnoodle” — they measure 55 inches long and are pink. We can expect to get expect to get 6 noodles, with each noodle being 9 inches long, out of a 55-inch long section of funnoodle.
A lot of stores sell two different sizes of pool noodles. The one we are looking for measures about 2 1/4 – 2 3/8 inches in diameter, which are usually the smaller of the two sizes.
If the noodle you have is 55 inches long, mark every 9 inches along the length of the foam noodle. If the noodle you have does not measure 55 inches long, use a calculator to figure out how many sections can be cut from the noodle with no waste. We want as little waste as possible with the foam material. If you need to cut the sections 9.25 inches long, then do so.
Buy a 3/4 inch PVC Pipe: This is your standard, white PVC pipe sold by hardware stores. Most stores sell sections either 5 feet or 10 feet long, so buy whichever length you want.
We can expect to get 5 sections out of a 5 foot piece of PVC pipe.
Cut the PCV pipe 2.50 inches longer than the foam sections. For example, my foam sections were cut 9 inches long and the PVC pipe was cut 11.25 inches long.
The importance of the 2.25 inches will be explained later in this article.
