WATCH: Fishermen Caught Cheating During Tournament as Crowd Gets Ugly

Breitbart.com ^ | 10-2-2022 | Warner Todd Huston

[servo1969]

A pair of fishermen were stripped of their $5,000 tournament win after judges in Ohio discovered that they had put lead weights inside their catch also faced the wrath of a furious crowd on Friday, according to a video of the scene.

Chase Cominsky from Pennsylvania and Jake Runyon from Ohio initially won the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship in Cleveland, Ohio’s Gordon Park on Sept. 30. They were awarded a $5,000 prize for their big win.

The duo’s catch weighed in at 33 pounds, nearly double what their nearest competitor had caught, according to the Daily Mail.

But the extreme difference in weight spread apparently caused concern, and tournament director Jason Fischer soon decided to gut one of the fish entered by Runyon and Cominsky.

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Inside the fish, the judge found lead sinkers, and it was realized that the two fishermen stuffed the weights inside their catch to make them weigh more so they could win the tournament.

After cutting the fish open, Fischer abruptly announced to the crowd, “We got weights on the fish!” And the crowd was not happy at all about being duped.

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Cominsky and Runyon won the Blaster Walleye Fall Brawl and the Walleye Slam to earn the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship in December of last year, and the prize money came in at a whopping $306,000, SportsTiger reported.

The pair have won other tournaments in which boats were prizes, too.

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Causing even more suspicion, after the Rossford tournament, Cominsky and Runyon refused to donate their catch to the local food bank as the contestants usually do.

Runyon has defended himself against claims that he cheated before. He even hired a lawyer to deflect against allegations.

[servo1969]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdsVAu5iDzc&t=876s

[servo1969]

8lbs of weights & a pair of pliers.

[MeganC]

I suspect criminal fraud charges on the line.

[Leaning Right]

> A pair of fishermen... <

Well, there’s the problem right there. Those two dummies should have registered as transsexual fisherpeople. No one would dare to question a transexual about anything.

[FreeperCell]

What does this remind you of???

[dsrtsage]

Their day jobs are democrat poll watchers

[4yearlurker]

This isn't the first time something like this has happened. I remember reading other stories of weights and sinkers in tournament fish.

[Yo-Yo]

8lbs of weights & a pair of pliers.

And a couple of fish fillets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktSVZMuBmHk

[cgbg]

The Federal Reserve in various markets?

;-)

[Malsua]

This one year, when I was a wee lad, we went fishing in Berlin Reservoir for Walleye.

We caught a few, smallish ones.

We were loading up and this boat rolled in and these two guys have two strings of absolutely STUNNING huge Walleye.

As they were loading up their boat, a crowd appeared around them. A game warden was next, then several uniformed Police officers.

After some time, we got to ask one of the Warden’s what happened and his answer was the same as this situation.

“When everyone is bringing a certain size fish and someone just blows it away, it’s cheating. These guys were using treble hooks to snag Walleye from the dam basin. It’s too early in the year for the big ones to bite with their mouth, so they’re poaching”.

Skill in fishing only takes you so far.

[circlecity]

If Walleye tournament fishermen are anything like Bass Tournament fisherman those guys are lucky the crowd didn’t tear them apart on the spot.

[Hyman Roth]

I used to fish Bass tournaments when I was in high school and college. The same fisherman won all the time. Their trick.....If it was a Saturday tournament they would fish Friday.....catch bass and cage them over night on the river. The bass they brought in were always beat up...like they had been in a cage all night. This was for $300 top prize. People will cheat at anything.

[z3n]

That’s actually what I suspected was going to be the case first time I saw the headline but hadn’t read the article yet. I thought maybe someone pre-caught some fish and planted it or smuggled it.

Putting weights in the fish seems risky to me. Most people ought to be able to eye of the fish and give a decent guesstimate of the weight just by looking at it if they’ve been fishing for some time. If they keep winning on weight with fish that don’t look comparatively big, someone’s going to start asking questions.

[DannyTN]

You don’t want to be the target of a crowd of ugly fishermen.

[Codeflier]

The world is amazing. How some people can get so worked up over something you couldn’t pay me to do. Snoozefest! LOL. To each his own for hobbies though!

[Telepathic Intruder]

Modern metal detectors can detect lead. That should probably be a standard procedure.

[plain talk]

LOL That was an earful.

[Captain Walker]

The world is amazing. How some people can get so worked up over something you couldn’t pay me to do.

If there's money involved, I think it's a safe bet that some of those guys could really use it.

[servo1969]

Two of the top money-winning tournament walleye fishermen in recent memory have seemingly been caught red-handed cheating in a big dollar event on Lake Erie by stuffing large lead sinkers in their fish to boost walleye weights and pocket $30,000 in winnings.

A cut to a walleye stomach immediately showed a large barrel sinker rolling out, then another and another.

“We’ve got weights in the fish,” said Fischer, who’s a Cleveland area police sergeant.

The crowd witnessing the weigh-in and the revelation of nearly a dozen heavy lead sinkers in the walleyes, immediately went bonkers. Many people were accusing the cheating pair of theft and calling for police intervention.

Sinkers had been wrapped with walleye fillets when stuffed inside the whole fish to help conceal the hard-surface of the lead inside, photos and videos show.

Obscenities were yelled at the two fishermen from other tournament participants and spectators, many of whom were videoing the scene with cell phone cameras. Video footage of the incident has been splashed all over social media, with written stories detailing the event even appearing in the New York Times (NYT).

Fischer told Runyan to leave the area fearing what may have resulted from the increasingly enraged anglers on the scene. Cominsky had already left, locking himself in a vehicle nearby.

Fischer reported to the NYT that he’d contacted Ohio’s DNR about the incident and said, “Everything was turned over to law enforcement.”

[day10]

I can’t explain why, but for some reason I find this hilarious!

Disclaimer: I am not a fisherman and don’t have a clue about this stuff.