Weighted Fish Cheating Scandal Rocks the World of Fishing Competitions

Scandal rocked the Lake Erie Walleye Trail fishing tournament on Friday after it was revealed that the winning fisherman had apparently stuffed their walleye fish with weights. Jason Fischer, the director of the tournament, thought the fish presented by tournament winners Jacob Runyan and Chase Cominsky looked weird. In a video that has since gone viral, he can be seen grabbing a knife, slitting open the fish, and finding it full of weights. A bystander caught Fischer’s reaction on camera and posted it to Twitter.

“We got weights in the fish, there we go!” Fischer shouted. “Get outta here!” Fischer started opening up the other fish, all were filled with weights. The crowd shouted curses and suggestions. “This is theft,” someone said. “Call the cops,” another said.

Fischer did, in fact, call the cops. Fischer, as well as being the director of the tournament, is a cop in a suburb of Cleveland. He called the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and turned over the evidence of cheating to the wildlife officers there. The Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office told the New York Times it had opened an investigation into the cheating and collected evidence from the scene.

Yes, it’s illegal in much of America to cheat in a fishing tournament. Statutes and punishments differ depending on the state where the cheating takes place, but it’s typically considered a form of fraud. In Texas, it’s a class A misdemeanor or a third-degree felony. Texas pioneered these laws, first getting them on the books in 1985. Defrauding a fishing tournament with prizes worth more than $10,000 in Texas carries a maximum fine of $10,000 and a possible 10 year stay in a state prison. Since then, the state has made an example of many fishy fraudsters.

In the decades since 1985, other states have passed laws against defrauding fishing tournaments. Two angels in Utah were charged with felonies and misdemeanors after cheating in a tournament with a prize of $2,500 in 2018. They were convicted, ordered to pay fines of $2,500, do 48 hours of community service, and spend two years on probation.

The prize money on offer in these fishing tournaments can be enormous. Had Runyan and Cominsky gotten away with their fishy fraud, they would have taken home $30,000. They have won several tournaments before. “You fucking piece of shit,” someone in the Twitter video said. “You’ve got a boat. You’ve got thousands of fucking dollars you stole from everyone.”

Cheating is a huge problem in competitive fishing and tournament organizers go to extraordinary lengths to prevent it. An official tournament observer was present on Runyan and Cominksy’s boat and it’s unclear how the pair got the weights into the walleyes without them noticing. Sometimes, observers take bribes. Anglers also take polygraph tests and voice-stress tests after wins so people can ask if they’ve cheated. Runyan and Cominsky had passed these after previous wins.