Two fishermen cheated in a tournament, got in over their heads, are now up a creek without a paddle
The pair were caught having stuffed lead weights and fish filets into their tournament catches
Aux Features Hobbies
Within weeks of learning that the chess world has been thrown into turmoil over anal bead-related cheating allegations, we are now faced with another massive tournament scandal. And this time, it’s erupted from the stinking, steaming guts of the competitive walleye fishing community.
The above video was shot at the fateful moment that a Lake Erie Walleye Trail (or LEWT) tournament judge and a mob of extremely pissed-off competitors caught the pair of cheaters. Spectrum News, a local Ohio publication, explains that a two-man team, Cleveland’s Jacob Runyan and Hermitage, Pennsylvania’s Chase Cominsky, were caught on Friday while “leading the series coming into the final event.”
You can tell just how serious all of this is when, in the video, electric text appears over phone footage of the confrontation and proclaims that we’re about to view the “Biggest Fish Cheating Scandal Ever!”
“We got weights in fish!” a man yells as the picture comes into focus. “There we go!”
The crowd roars. “Call the cops!” someone shouts. “You need to go to jail!” another adds.
The judge stands with Runyan, who bends over his and Cominsky’s walleye catch and starts gutting the fish. He pulls out lead balls. A bystander, in poetry inspired by some aquatic muse, taunts the disgraced, would-be champion with, “Where’s your crown now?” More lead balls are retrieved as the fish are cut into. Then, in a terrible indignity not unlike finding that a prize steer has been stuffed with hamburgers, the judge pulls out walleye filets from inside one of the fish.
Faced with the evidence of his crime, Runyan stands expressionless, looking down at his tainted catch while everyone around him yells out insults and calls into question the money he’s won in past tournaments.
In a Facebook post from Saturday, the rightful winners were announced and tournament director Jason Fischer (good surname) solemnly writes that “All LEWT anglers deserve better.” He’s also promised to “make an official statement to all my LEWT anglers addressing this matter” later tonight. Hopefully, that statement will mark an end to this dark chapter in walleye fishing, and the pages of history that those horrible cheats defaced with their crimes can be ripped out and used to wrap up an order of deep-fried walleye and greasy french fries.
[via Boing Boing]
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61 Comments
Sooo…vibrating anal beads or no?
No, lead balls. Read carefully!
Yeah that’s what the guys are accused of but what does the fish have to say about it?
Stay tuned!
You can tune a piano but you can’t tuna fish.
Hot fuckin’ Tuna
More importantly, why were the fish eating lead weights? Weird.
So many questions!
If this guy had been only marginally more clever he would definitely have fired back with “how can I control what a fish eats??”
I mean, just inject them with mercury. People expect to find that in fish!
because…
It just turned to the viewers and started singing Take Me to the River.
The T***p miasma continues. Did they initially weigh them at 10 times the expected weight?
If that were the case, shouldn’t they have pulled Whoppers out of the fish guts?
Trump is guilty of a lot of terrible shit, but I don’t think you can blame this on him. There is crazy big money in fishing tournaments, and there’s no referee on each boat. People have been cheating to win money long before Trump was born.
Agreed. It’s not like the guy tried to claim the democrats had planted the weights and fish meat in there.
Didn’t realize AV Club covered fishing tournament drama. Guess I can finally cancel my subscription to whatever fishing tournament website this article should appear on.
Yeah, feels more like a Deadspin topic, or maybe Jalopnik’s “Boatnik” feature.
I guess any drama’ll do ya!
They’ll cover any acting that stinks.
Does anybody care about what these fish have been put through? Dog fighting gets you prison time. What does forced fish cannibalism and lead poisoning get you? A boat it sounds like to me.
Michael Vick is somewhere taking notes.
All I can think is “Where’s your crown now, Moses!?”
Thank god I’m not the only one.
first chess, now this. next you’ll tell me the weights stuffed into the fish were anal beads
Worse, the anal beads in the chess scandal were stuffed with walleye.
Must’ve smelled amazing.
I was gutted when I found out about this scandal… And I don’t know the first fin about the subject.
Scale back the puns!
No. You’re opening up a whole can or worms here and you dolphinitely need to do betta.
Oh, get off your high perch. It’s not like we haven’t seen this carp before.
But, he did serve a porpoise here!
Please, nobody take the bait on this….
I agree, this is neither the time nor the plaice.
Too late, I’m hooked.
I thought I’d comment, just for the halibut.
Weighty issue, for sure.
Need to reel it in on this thread.
That fish must have been hungry.
What a crappie line.
Bass? I was hoping this was a cod piece.
Holy Mackerel, you’re Floundering. I just can’t Fathom. Maybe if I was Tanked, I’d take the Bait, you know, for the Halibut.
Sorry, I’m just Trolling you.
Left out the part that they won 500k last year and a boat while probably cheating which is why these guys are so pissed.Also to expand upon the situation for fellow commentors. People were initally suspicious because they weighed 5-6 fish that looked around the same size as other fish caught yet weighed a total of like 5 pounds more. So people were confused and one guy held their fish and felt something hard so he got a filet knife and found the lead weight. The “feeling something hard” is also why the guys had stuffed the fish with other fish filets, because they probably considered that someone could feel the lead balls.
Thanks. I’m actually genuinely interested in this, as an amateur angler. So I was glad for extra info.
Yeah, I know Reid wanted to make this sound like petty, redneck hobby drama, but there was some serious dinero involved.It’s not just “lol, stupid hillbillies pissed over who gets their name engraved on a $20 plastic trophy”.
People have suspected these guys for years.
This whole thing sounds like a major haddock for all parties.
God damn, if I was that dude I would have gotten the fuck out of there, crowd was ready to hang him. And those lead balls were HUGE. Having read the article I figured they were the size of BBs or slightly larger – those were at least golf ball sized.
His friend high-tailed it.
Balls made of steel
Jason Fischer. Now that, friends, is a solid aptronym.
Mike Trout is really in the wrong sport, isn’t he?
First chess, then poker, now fishing… looks like there’s an epidemic of cheating going around in the world of sports-that-don’t-seem-like-sports.
Because the sports-that-don’t-seem-like-sports are now having multi-million dollar sponsored tournaments.
The Coen brothers furiously sharpening their pencils…
I don’t get this joke. Also they broke up didn’t they?
I don’t either, and yes they did.
This story checks off a lot of boxes for Coen Bros. movie inspiration.
Fair enough!
Who wears open toed sandals when fishing? These guys don’t seem too bright. All of this time and they just figured out the fix.
I’m so glad I get my news of piscatorial shenanigans from AV Club…