Fishing Scandal

Rebekah Dunlap

Video edited by Layla Troyer

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When you think of fishing, cheating doesn’t come to mind; other people might agree with you. That was before the most recent cheating incident. This was during a fishing tournament in Ohio, where Jacob Runyan and Chase Cominsky were participants. If their cheating hadn’t been discovered, they would have won the competition and walked away with $30,000 dollars. The tournament director Jason Fischer was weighing the fish, and he opened up a catch after noticing the fish weighed much more than they should have. He found lead balls used as weights and pulled them out of the fish. People off camera were distraught and yelling. The two cheaters were then disqualified and went to court for several felonies, including cheating, attempted grand theft, and possessing criminal tools. The next hearing will be on November 9th. The man that filmed the whole ordeal said that he was a little suspicious of them because they had won so many tournaments to the point it’s not possible to win by that much. There is some skill in fishing, but some of it is luck too. Some of it can also be knowledge, like knowing the best spots where a particular type of fish you want likes to hang out, but what they did wasn’t luck. If the weights hadn’t been found, they would have won $30,000 dollars. They had already won more than $300,000 dollars in cash and prizes in previous tournaments. Thankfully the weights were found, and they are being charged appropriately.