The Great Professional Fishing Scandal of 2022

Most modern live wells are pretty good, if you pump out and keep repumping multiple times during the day to keep the oxygen levels up.

If it’s really hot in the summer bring some ice to dump in there to keep the water cooler so they’re not as stressed.

 

One reason my wife and I stopped entering salt water tournaments here, too easy for people to cheat and they do. Some get caught, more don't.

 

Sport needs some TSA style metal detectors or something at the weigh station.

 

Seems a no brainer. But they were apparently stuffing them with fish chum. Also read about people injecting their fish with water.

Might as well shut the damn thing down

 

Guess the ancient stereotype of fisherman being the most dishonest amongst us exists for a reason.

 

Don't be jealous you can't catch a fish

 

Fishing is meant to be relaxing and with alcohol.

 

Your kids must not be old enough to go yet

 

True, but 98 percent of the guys are honest hard working guys. Not to mention most guys I fish with have multiple fishing partners for certain circuits or nights they fish. So that would make it pretty hard to cheat.

You can always cheat, but don’t get caught. Most of these guys have been fishing long enough to almost guess a fish’s weight or length from a distance. It’s not as easy as you would think to cheat. Like I said earlier, what you saw on the video is nothing compared to what would happen to you if showed up with weights in your fish at local tournament with no bystanders.

 

Problem is that there are other ways to cheat than stuffing your fish with weights. Some guys have been caught keeping fish in a chicken wire fence or baskets somewhere on the lake and taking them out during the tournament. There was one instance where guys were meeting up on the lake and giving all their fish to one boat and splitting the prize money. It happens. Cheating happens in every sport unfortunately.

 

Happened with kayak tournaments recently as well, guy has modified his measuring board to skew the size.

Even shittier in that situation where it's on the honor system vs a public weigh in

 

And apparently fish stretching is a thing? Sheesh.

 

I saw a video of the director of the contest first busting them. What an absolute chad he is. He seemed to have sniffed it out by the weight/length ratio alone. He cut that first fish open with the confident stroke of the knife like he knew he was going to find added weight in there. No trepidation. No fear. He had 'em.

 

Here it is.

 

I know of a few places where those cheaters get shot and there's no video evidence

 

Not coincidentally, those are also the kinds of places where in a subsequent court appearance where a judge is inquiring with the shooters to determine all the relevant facts and circumstances, “he needed killin” would probably be a satisfactory response.

 

So Tenny is utvol0427.

 

Apparently they added 8 pounds to a 25 pound bag making it 33 pounds. All those guys have been fishing long enough to easily tell the difference between those two weights of fish.

 

I imagine they'd get stuffed full of sinkers and converted to fish structure

 

I'm guessing they've gotten away with it so much that they got brazen.