Okie Noodling resumes Saturday

The 19th annual Okie Noodling Tournament and Festival continues on Saturday at Wacker Park in Pauls Valley.

This weekend's Okie Noodling Tournament will have one main method to prevent cheating: a polygraph test.

“Every noodler agrees when they register that they are subject to a polygraph test,” said Kristen Bolte, executive assistant at the Pauls Valley Chamber of Commerce.

The City of Pauls Valley runs the tournament and has a few rules for participants: the fish must be caught within 36 hours of the deadline, the fish must be alive when brought to weigh-in, and it must be hand-caught in Oklahoma waters, no stringers or rod and reels allowed.

The Okie Noodling committee is strict on these rules and does not tolerate anyone that breaks them.

In the Okie Noodling tournament, there are four categories: scuba, women’s, natural, and the 17 & under. The winners of each category, besides the 17 & under, must take a polygraph test, and anyone else the committee finds suspicious will have to take it as well.

Before the lie detector was implemented in the competition, the Okie Noodling Tournament went off the honor code.

But as more noodling tournaments started to pop up across the state, the Okie Noodling committee wanted to prevent people from turning in

the same fish at different competitions.

Since it’s difficult to

determine when someone caught the fish, Bolte said the committee felt a polygraph test was the best option.

Consequences for breaking tournament rules include being banned from the competition and forfeiting their chances at any winnings.

Aside from the lie detector, the tournament has one other method to prevent cheating. At weigh-in, each fish is examined by an expert team to determine if an alternate technique was used to obtain the fish. The experts look for any suspicious markings on the fish to see if a rod and reel was used, or a stringer.

Besides these options, Bolte said these are the best options to prevent people from breaking the rules.

“There’s not much more you can do,” Bolte said.

[PHOTO BY BRYAN TERRY, THE OKLAHOMAN] Heath Morgan, left, of Lawton, hands a catfish to Jesse Dalton, of Lawton, during the Okie Noodling Tournament in Pauls Valley on June 17, 2017.