Fishing Contest Rocked by Cheating Charges After Weights Found in Winning Catches

“You have to consider that in some of these tournaments, ounces can mean tens, or hundreds, of thousands of dollars,” he said.

Mr. Robertson said placing weights into fish was a primitive and “sloppy” way to cheat, as seen with the suspicions of Mr. Fischer.

“It would be like saying a five-foot-tall person weighs 500 pounds, but you look at him and he looks like an athlete,” Mr. Robertson said. “These fish were so bulging.”

Mr. Fischer, who is a police sergeant in a Cleveland suburb, said he had spoken to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources about what happened. “Everything was turned over to law enforcement,” he said.

Wildlife officers with the department responded to the tournament, “collected evidence and are preparing a report” for the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office, Stephanie O’Grady, a department spokeswoman, said on Sunday.

“As this is an open investigation, we have no further comment at this time,” she said.

Mr. Fischer said he was unclear what recourse he had for recovering money from previous tournaments won by Mr. Runyan and Mr. Cominsky.

He said that the men had taken voice-stress and polygraph tests for his tournaments, a common practice for winners of such events, and had passed. Mr. Fischer said an observer had also been on their boat during a previous competition.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/02/us/fishing-tournament-cheating-scandal-lake-erie.html