Thanks to a culture of "win at any cost," now a fishing tourney has a cheater.

[Archae]

Guy gets caught red-handed, cheating in a fishing tourney, with fillets of walleye and lead weights inserted into fish he caught.

Link to tweet

[brewens]

1. There may have been some collusion going on there. I wonder if there was a new official

working the weigh in or something? Maybe it's different people everywhere they go, but if it's not, someone may have been paid off to look the other way.

Missing something that obvious and easy to catch. With that kind of money at stake. How the hell were they not randomly checking or something?

[Hamlette]

2. nothing new. Haven't you read Carl Hiaason Double Whammy

it's great. About a bass fishing contest. Funny stuff.

[dameatball]

6. I was thinking about posting the same thing. The first Hiasson book I ever read.

[Hugin]

3. My eyes just rolled inside out...

Ow.

What I took away from this video is the fish obviously need sponsors. So, they can wear cool patches too.

Off to get some eye drops and schedule an appointment with my optometrist.

[IcyPeas]

4. ...to win hundreds of thousands in prizes?

Ya know, maybe the prize money is too large. Someone's always gonna cheat when there's that much money to win. Can't they just win a nice trophy? A gift certificate to Applebee's?

[RockRaven]

5. I'm not sure it's a culture which prioritizes *winning* which is to blame...

Maybe it's a culture which gives a shit about what some other person's fish weighs which is to blame. If nobody gave two shits about some other guy's fish, there wouldn't be any prize money or even any contest.

The entertainment world is chock-a-block with all kinds of vicarious bullshit, but fishing contests rank right up there with watching other people play video games in "oh get a fucking life"-ness.

[Hortensis]

10. Lol. But that's exactly what A LOT OF people really do say about what you're doing.

We're talking about A LOT-LOT OF people here. Surely you don't imagine they respect us for hanging our personality traits out bare-assed on social media for their judgement? When we could be doing something "worthwhile"?

Don't imagine, though, that these sorts will stop crapping on you no matter what you change to if you make yourself available to them.

[malaise]

7. Winning is good

Losing is bad
Yesterday I read about cheating in chess.
People on our planet want rewards by any means necessary.

[doc03]

8. It has been done before even at local tournaments with a few hundred dollars

payoff.

[SYFROYH]

9. Putting weights in fish has been happening forever.

Probably since the first fish tournament.

[TheBlackAdder]

13. What's to stop people from just injecting water into the fish so it's less detectable?

[dalton99a]

11. Chase Cominsky and Jake Runyon

Multiple media outlets, including the Toledo (Ohio) Blade, have reported that Hermitage resident Chase Cominsky and Jake Runyon, of Cleveland, had been the event's apparent winners until a tournament official cut open one of the fish they caught, as seen in a YouTube video (WARNING: The video contains explicit language), and produced weights, which would have increased the poundage of their catch.

Observers and officials had suspected Cominsky and Runyon as long ago as last year — the YouTube video was titled, in part, "Lake Erie Walleye Trail Cheater Chase Cominsky and Jake Runyan finally got caught."

In 2021, the Toledo Blade reported that Cominsky and Runyan were disqualified from the Fall Brawl fishing event, after they had apparently won, because one of them had failed a polygraph test.

https://www.sharonherald.com/news/hermitage-angler-at-center-of-fishing-cheating-scandal/article_2235e3b4-41ad-11ed-b2e1-731c43c95bc1.html

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They won $306,000 last year.

[TheBlackAdder]

14. It's not just that. Look at all of the sponsors they have, it's probably more than their winnings.

.

I wonder what the sponsors can do, if anything, for duped into supporting fraudsters?

.

[TheBlackAdder]

12. K&R for WTF?

[ProfessorGAC]

15. Put Money Up, Someone Will Cheat

In the amateur golf world, there have been sandbaggers forever.
We knew a guy that was clearly a plus handicap. (Meaning better than a scratch player.)
He'd post scores at multiple courses that were always 3 to 6 shots higher than what he really shot.
Come open & invitational time, hed have a "certified" handicap that put him into the A flight, instead of the championship flight.I
Then, he'd protect a lead the second day by missing putts on purpose so his score wouldn't look too low for an A player.
He got away with it for 10 years, pocketing 3 or 4 grand a year until the host pros started listening to the complaints.
But, I'm guessing he netted $35k over the years by cheating.