Breaking Down The Walleye Fishing Tournament Cheating Scandal That Has Taken Over The Internet

This weekend the fishing community has gone viral after two men were caught cheating during a Walleye Tournament up in Lake Erie. Billy Football wrote a good blog summing up what had happened in the video above.

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Here are my takes from someone that has been around a bunch of fishing tournaments:

The crowd went absolutely nuts when Mr. Fischer, the tournament director, held up the donut hole sized lead weight for everyone to see. It was blatantly obvious that something hard was in the stomach of the fish, while Mr. Fischer was handling them, which resulted to him cutting the walleye open. When cutting open any type of fish it is not unusual to find small fishing weights, lures, or other fish. However, this was obviously the size of a big rock, which is unusual if not just flat out cheating.

On another note, when someone handles a certain species frequently, they are typically able to have a good estimate on what they think that animal weighs, scores, etc. Therefore, the fellow professional tournament anglers & director were skeptical when reading off the combined weight of the fish. One bystander even yelled out, “No way” whenever the weight was announced, which is layman's terms for that dude is a cheating POS.

After doing some research, it is known that these guys have won multiple tournaments in the past resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars & free boats, etc. This is absolutely absurd. I have participated in bow fishing tournaments, so I have somewhat of an understanding on how these fellow professional walleye anglers feel. What some people don't know is the amount of money and time these anglers put into these tournaments. Typically it costs a couple hundred dollars just to enter a tournament along with all the money to put into the boat, the gear, the gas, etc. It is not cheap or easy to just go participate in a tournament, especially a tournament made for professionals. 

I don't know a whole lot about walleye tournaments, but I could guess this is similar to any other fishing tournament. They can be exhausting and draining. Anglers will fish for weeks before the tournament to get a good idea of the brush, water, etc. Correct me if I am wrong, but scouting definitely probably goes into walleye fishing tournaments as well. So much time and energy goes into these tournaments, because big money is on the line, which could be life changing. I guess cheating your way through all of them kinda makes sense if you want to lay it all out there.

The most shocking thing of all this is that the cheaters walked out of the parking lot untouched. They may not be the first people to ever cheat in a tournament, but they clearly are the sloppiest to do it, which can often result in getting your ass kicked.