The city of Pauls Valley made the decision this week to move this year’s Okie Noodling Tournament, planned for Saturday, from Wacker Park to the Santa Fe Depot area in downtown Pauls Valley due to excessively wet conditions and storm damage at the park.
“If you’ve driven through the park, you know the condition of the park. There are trees down. There’s standing water. There’s standing water on the road, and we’re expecting to get more rain this week,” Pauls Valley Tourism Director Tawni Huggans told city council members during their regular meeting Tuesday night. “There’s just no possible way we’re going to be able to have it there.”
Huggans said city employees and the tournament’s planning committee began working on an alternate plan for the event Monday morning, after it became clear the park was not going to be a feasible site this year. The group briefly considered moving the event to the Wacker Park parking area between the baseball field and the old gym, according to Huggans, but ultimately decided that location would also present additional challenges.
“So we came downtown and began to evaluate how to make it work in the space we have here,” Huggans said.
Crews spent Monday and Tuesday remapping vendor and food truck sites, stage areas, and checking access to water and electric in the depot area before presenting the new plan to the city council for approval Tuesday evening.
Huggans credited city employees and the planning committee for their quick action in forming a new plan.
“Instead of giving up and canceling, we pivoted and made a solid plan to make this successful,” Huggans said.
Billed as the world’s largest hand-fishing tournament, Okie Noodling regularly attracts hand-fishermen, better known as “noodlers,” from all over who come to compete for the tournament title, weighing in record-setting flathead catfish they have pulled from Oklahoma waters with their bare hands.
This is the tournament’s 25th year, and it will be the first year in tournament history for the event to be held in downtown Pauls Valley. According to numbers introduced during a Pauls Valley Tourism Board meeting earlier this year, more than 10,000 people traveled through the Wacker Park area during last year’s two-day tournament.
This year’s tournament had already been pulled back to a one-day event prior to the venue change. Huggans said everything else related to the tournament will go on as planned Saturday, June 14, just in the new location, including the free concert Saturday night featuring The Great Divide, Ray and the High Rollers and Brooklyn Fenn.
A two block stretch of Santa Fe Street from Grant Avenue (State Highway 19) to McClure Avenue will be blocked off for the tournament. The 100 block of East Paul Avenue will also be closed to traffic to accommodate vendors and to serve as the staging lane for noodlers weighing in fish.
The main noodling stage, where competitors gather to weigh in and show off their catfish, will be at the north end of the depot parking area.
The Kids Zone, with children’s activities, and the mechanical bull will be located in the Santa Fe Depot Park area, vendors will line Paul Avenue and Santa Fe Street south of the noodling stage and food trucks will line the south end of the depot parking lot near the Depot Pavilion.
Huggans said there will be misting stations and picnic tables at the pavilion, and those attending are welcome to bring lawn chairs and blankets for seating like they have in years past at Wacker Park.
Admission to the Okie Noodling Tournament is free.
