19yr-old American becomes the first woman to win competition where hopefuls catch catfish with their BARE HANDS

Lucy Millsap hauls her 72-pound winner on stage at the 14th annual Okie Noodling Festival

A 19-year-old woman has won top honors at the 14th Annual Okie Noodling Festival in Oklahoma, bringing a 72-pound flathead catfish on stage to claim victory.

Lucy Millsap was the first woman in the history of the competition to win, after she saw off 200 competitors to win first place and $1500 in the 'Big Fish' category.

Noodling is a sport most popular in the southern states of the U.S. in which flathead catfish are caught by hand.

The method is daring: noodlers wave their arms around in a catfish hole. If all goes according to plan, the fish will latch onto the arm as a defensive measure and the noodler can bring the fish in. The arm-as-bait method means the sport isn't for the faint hearted.

According to NewsOK, Millsap's chosen sport has landed her in the hospital numerous times, but so far all her fingers are intact.

Millsap  caught the 72-pound catfish in Lake Texoma at 3am the morning of the competition

'My dad asked me if I wanted to fish in the women's division,' Millsap, who's been noodling since she was five, told the paper. 'I said, "Heck no." I don't want to fish in the women's division. I want to beat the men.'

Millsap is part of an all-female noodling collective called the Bare Knuckle Babes (she's May in their annual calendar). 

It was the Texan former high school cheerleader's first competition. According to NewsOK, she caught the 72-pound catfish in Lake Texoma at 3am the morning of the competition, before driving three hours to Wacker Park in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, with the live fish in the back of her truck.

The competition is the brainchild of Moore native and filmmaker Bradley Beesley, who expected the inaugural Okie Noodling Festival to be the last.

Millsap was the first woman in the history of the competition to win, after she saw off 200 competitors

He began the festival to support and promote his documentary Okie Noodling. The first festival attracted 500 people, and 14 years on, it's drawing crowds of 10,000 from around the country.

'We never thought it would take off like this,' he told NewsOK. 'It was just a device for the film.'

The documentary spawned not just the Okie Noodling Festival but also a second documentary and a television series aired on the History Channel called Mudcats. 

The sport is described as a centuries-old tradition by noodlers. Urban Dictionary's most popular entry for the term 'noodling' is:

The annual competition sees people wade through murky waters hoping to catch a 30+lbs catfish

'A form of fishing in which a crazy person runs into a lake and searches for holes on the bottom with his foot. Then he inserts his finger into the hole and lets something bite it. Hopefully, it's a catfish. If so, he wrestles the catfish to the surface and drags it to shore. If it's not a catfish, he may lose his finger to a snapping turtle or his life to a water moccasin. Believe it or not, noodling is illegal in many states.'

That last part is definitely true - Millsap's own state of Texas has only just legalized the practice, and it is illegal everywhere but 11 Southern states.

The festival's slogan is 'No hooks, no bait, no fear,' and it's a credo Millsap seems to live by.

'Women don't think they can do a lot of stuff. And you get a lot of trash talk from the guys,' Millsap told NewsOK. 'I'm proud to justify the name Bare Knuckle Babes.'

Asked what she'd name her winning catfish, Millsap responded, 'Dinner.'

Culled from DAILYMAIL