I have a strong feeling that cheating in fishing competitions is off the scale because there are some quite nice prizes, and some people lack morals. This is a recent example, but you’ll find many others on the internet. Quick research indicates to me an epidemic of cheating in fishing.
It was the grand finalé of a Lake Erie (North America) fishing competition. The fish were being weighed. A couple of guys, Chase Cominsky and Jacob Ryan were leading the contest. They needed a good last day to win and secure that precious first prize of $30,000. You can see why cheating occurs 😉.
Five fish were weighed, and the tournament director, Jason Fischer (good name for the role), estimated the weight of the five fish to be around 20 pounds (9 kilograms). The scales read 34 pounds. He could not believe it and called for a knife and cut open the fish. It seems that he has experienced all this before.
He pulled a large metal weight from the belly of the first fish he grabbed. More weights followed from the other fish and even fish fillets which had been stuffed in the bellies.
As The Times reports, pandemonium followed.
“Get the f*** otta hear” Fischer snarled.
“That’s theft” a man watching shouted.
“You should be in jail” exclaimed another.
“Check every fish”, screamed someone.
“Call the cops” another bystander remarked.
Chaos and plenty of upset because a lot of the truthful participants had spent a lot of time, money and effort to try and win the competition.
Fischer feared that the two cheats would be attacked.
Fischer said:
“At that moment it turned from a fishing tournament to a mob scene. These guys who put their heart and soul and money into this were just pissed. This is not about the money. Most of these guys turn up in trucks with boats, worth, together, at least $200,000. They take time away from their wives, their kids, their jobs. This is a competitive thing. These guys took that away from all the other anglers.”
Ryan and Cominsky had been disqualified from an earlier fishing contest. They had failed a polygraph test according to the Toledo Blade newspaper. After another tournament they had passed a second polygraph test.
It appears that Cominsky and Ryan have a reputation which precedes them. I’d expect them to have difficulty in entering future events. They have not commented on their latest exploits.
Source: The Times. Please note: Note: This is an embedded video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source or the video is turned into a link which would stop it working here. I have no control over this.
Below are some more articles on fish.
