CNN
—
One of the winners of a fishing tournament in Ohio last weekend is hoping two suspected cheaters face the maximum penalty following the cheating scandal that rocked the world of competitive fishing.
“I just hope they get them for all they can for what they’ve done,” said Steve Hendricks, who along with his teammate won Team of the Year after the disqualification of the two apparent cheaters.
Hendricks noted how important competitions are to many anglers.
“That’s what they like to do,” Hendricks told CNN in an interview Tuesday. “And they’re trying to do a great job and it’s a shame that a select few can come along and spoil it all for you. So hopefully they get the most out of it.
Potential winners of the nearly $29,000 prize were disqualified from the Lake Erie Walleye Trail tournament after discovering their fish were stuffed with sinkers and fish fillets – a moment documented in several viral videos shared on social media.
“They picked up a fish that should have weighed about four pounds and they put it on the scale and it said eight,” Hendricks told CNN on Tuesday. “And then they put in the rest of their five and it came to 35.”
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources gathered evidence from the incident on Friday and is preparing a report for the Cuyahoga County District Attorney’s Office, spokeswoman Stephanie O’Grady told CNN.
“As this is an open investigation, we have no further comment at this time,” she wrote in an email to CNN.
Jason Fischer, the tournament director, confirmed in a statement on Facebook late Monday that tournament officials have passed all information regarding the incident to authorities and submitted records and a statement to the INRA Division of Natural Resources. Ohio.
Fischer previously told CNN that he immediately became suspicious when a team’s fish weighed nearly double 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 was just no way,” he said. “I could also hear the crowd grumbling, like ‘no way, there’s no way. “”
“I physically felt the fish, I could feel hard objects inside the fish,” he said. The viral videos show Fischer, surrounded by competitors, slicing the fish with a knife and removing what he said was a ball of lead. Jacob Runyan, a member of the two-person team who allegedly cheated, remained silent while watching a video that Fischer shared with CNN.
Runyan and his teammate, Chase Cominsky, were expected to win the $28,760 prize, Fischer told CNN. The prize money for each tournament it runs comes from the entry fee each angler pays to participate.
Neither Runyan nor Cominsky responded to CNN’s request for comment.
“Everyone was going crazy,” Hendricks said Tuesday. “It’s just a shame that it had to happen.”
Fischer, who holds around eight tournaments throughout the year, has done a “great job” of trying to keep the competition “legitimized”, Hendricks said. But the scandal was “an eye opener”, and he speculated that in future competitions may have to use X-rays or cut fish from the top five boats to ensure fair play.
“It’s a rare thing,” he added, adding that “99.9% of the group” in competition does not cheat. “It’s a great group of guys doing what they love, and it’s just a shame we had to deal with that.”
In his statement on Monday, Fischer said the tournament would learn from the scandal and “make changes to tournament angling that would protect the integrity of all circuits.”
“We will solve this problem. We will start by putting in place new rules during weigh-ins and boat checks,” Fischer said. “We will work hard this offseason and learn from you all the protections you want to see in our series.”
