Two fishers, Jake Runyan and Chase Cominsky, have been caught red handed cheating. They shoved lead weights in the fish to increase their weights and once exposed, it is likely they will never fish again and actually quite likely they will suffer severe consequences. They have won a ton of money fishing and at bare minimum, they will owe massive penalties to pay back their winnings.
Here is the video from when they were caught. I mean, fully exposed in front of everyone. Cut to 14:30 if you don’t get directed there:
Carl Hiaasen wrote an entire novel based on that premise back in 1987. Hilarious book. So it happens enough for the idea to have been floating around for decades. I’m not particularly shocked. I am a little surprised they got exposed so publicly and blatantly though.
But every competitive event is eventually going to attract some cheaters, even as seemingly benign ones as competitive fishing. I’m pretty sure even cheating at solitaire isn’t uncommon . But money is a lovely added inducement.
I’ve heard of a lot cheating scandals for decades. Lots of prize money available but I have no clue why. I remember an old thread about the use of an illegal rig, a big thing with a ton of hooks on it, just the same as legal rigs except the whole thing would spin as it was dragged through the water.
Why would you think people would not care? They are the losers of the competition and fans if they were watching, probably friends and family. Those two stole money and had been suspected of doing so for awhile.
There is money in these fishing tournaments, big money, real big money. From the sponsors who finance these boats as if the were NASCARs, to the prize money. These guys won 300k dollars last year, they were accused of cheating then but got away with it. This has been going on for some time.
It is major fraud and theft. Not just some good 'ol boys out fishing. Hopefully the sponsors will sue to recovery their investments, the tournements will sue to keep and restore the credibility of the games, institute new policies like a simple fucking hand held metal detector, and these guys will end up in jail.
Too much reliance on honesty of the sport. There is no honor among thieves.
Lead isn’t a very good conductor, and small pellets of metal (especially if they’re coated with a thin layer of insulator) are hard for metal detectors to pick up to begin with. And even if they do get metal detectors sensitive enough to pick up lead pellets in fish, they could just switch to stone.
There’s a really simple solution to the problem of cheating by adding weight - score based on length. I suppose that’s a bit trickier to do in a standardized manner, but it’s also more in line with how most people measure their fish, at least from what I’ve learned about fishing from playing video games.
There is a Reddit thread on this and apparently some of these competitions have substantial prize money on the line. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars in a season. Reportedly these guys in the OP video made $300,000 last year.
Most fishing competitions are low level things with minimal prizes and people just do for fun but at the top end it is a big deal. Apparently cheating like this is a crime. Good chance these guys will end up in jail if convicted (so says Reddit).
Old thread I mentioned above. It’s less about cheating and more about overturning a victory based on a technicality. The links are useless now so no idea who won but it was a $1 million dollar prize, not a minor thing. Looks like there’s a lot of sponsorship money involved. Not surprising the money is there, there are almost 60 million anglers in the US, more than all the golfers and tennis players combined. There’s a lot of money in fishing gear. If you can convince a fisherman that he’ll bring in more fish with a better reel or lure he’ll pay a lot for it. There’s a saying in the biz that big fish go for big name lures.
They only need to check the potential winners. There should also be some random checks also. If I was the lowdown dirty type of fisherman that cheated at fishing I’d shove naturally available bait down the fish’s throat instead of lead shot. How they gonna prove I didn’t catch a really hungry fish.
. But money is a lovely added inducement.
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