DailyExpertNews
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One of the winners of a fishing tournament in Ohio last weekend hopes that two alleged cheaters will receive the maximum punishment as a result of the cheating scandal that has rocked the competitive fishing world.
“I just hope they get them for all they can for what they’ve done,” said Steve Hendricks, who won Team of the Year along with his teammate after the two apparent cheaters were disqualified.
Hendricks noted how much the matches mean to many anglers.
“That’s what they love to do,” Hendricks told DailyExpertNews in an interview on Tuesday. “And they try to do a great job and it’s just a shame a select few can come in and ruin it all for you. So I hope they make the most of it.”
The potential winners of the nearly $29,000 prize were disqualified from the Lake Erie Walleye Trail tournament after their fish were discovered filled with lead weights and fish fillets — a moment documented in several viral videos shared on social media.
“They took a fish that should have weighed about four pounds and they put it on the scale and it said eight,” Hendricks told DailyExpertNews on Tuesday. “And then they put the rest of their five in and it got to 35.”
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources gathered evidence of the incident Friday and is preparing a report for the Cuyahoga County State Department, spokesman Stephanie O’Grady told DailyExpertNews.
“As this is an open investigation, we have no further comment at this time,” she wrote in an email to DailyExpertNews.
Jason Fischer, the tournament director, confirmed in a statement to Facebook Monday night that tournament officials had passed all information related to the incident to authorities and submitted records and a statement to the Ohio Division of Natural Resources.
Fischer previously told DailyExpertNews that he was immediately suspicious when one team’s fish weighed almost twice what he expected at the Cleveland Championship weigh-in.
The walleye in the bucket looked like they should weigh about 4 pounds each, but the total weight indicated they should be at least 7 pounds each, he said.
“I thought, there’s just no way,” he said. “I could also hear the crowd grumbling like ‘no way, there’s no way.'”
“I felt the fish physically, I could feel hard objects in the fish,” he said. The viral videos show Fischer, surrounded by competitors, cutting open the fish with a knife and pulling out what he believes was a lead ball. Jacob Runyan, a member of the two-man team who reportedly cheated, stood silently watching a video Fischer shared with DailyExpertNews.
Runyan and his teammate, Chase Cominsky, would win the $28,760 prize, Fischer told DailyExpertNews. The prize money at each tournament he hosts comes from the entry fee each angler pays to participate.
Neither Runyan nor Cominsky responded to DailyExpertNews’s request for comment.
“Everyone went crazy,” Hendricks said Tuesday. “It’s just a shame that had to happen.”
Fischer, who hosts about eight tournaments throughout the year, has done a “great job” in keeping the competition “legitimate,” Hendricks said. But the scandal was “an eye-opener,” and he speculated that in the future, matches may need to use X-rays or cut open the fish in the top five boats to ensure fair play.
“This is a rare thing,” he added, saying that “99.9% of the group” that participates is not cheating. “It’s a great group of guys doing what they love, and it’s just a shame we had to deal with this.”
In his statement Monday, Fischer said the tournament would learn from the scandal and “make some changes to tournament fishing that protect the integrity of all circuits.”
“We will resolve this. We are starting to implement new rules on weigh-ins and boat checks,” said Fischer. “We’ll be working hard this off-season and learning from you what protections you want to see in our series.”