[imagesource: Dave Leska / Yough Lake News]

There’s another cheating scandal rocking the world of competitive sport, and this time it has nothing to do with the chess grandmaster anal bead conspiracy saga.

Nope, nothing to do with the poker world being torn apart, either.

It’s the world of competitive fishing that is in upheaval after two of its ‘best’ competitors in Ohio were caught cheating.

Jacob Runyan (left in the image above) and his fishing partner Chase Cominsky (right) have previously been regarded as among the best anglers in the sport.

Their legacy has now been marred after Runyan was caught stuffing his catch of walleye fish up to their eyeballs with lead balls.

This helped the five fish, which were estimated to weigh about 1,8 kilograms each, or around 10 kilograms total, weigh in at nearly 15 kilograms.

Jason Fischer, the director of the tournament, known as the Lake Erie Walleye Trail, was suspicious of these fat fish, along with attendees looking on in Cleveland on Friday.

The New York Times notes how Fischer has a closer look at one of the walleye and felt an unnaturally hard object in its stomach, commenting that “it’s not like they’re eating rocks”.

H then sliced it open to find the incriminating evidence that Runyan’s fish were tampered with.

What followed was a multitude of “motherf*ckers” and other expletive-laden outcries from onlookers who accused the pair of stealing:

Serious Controversy in Pro fishing tournament as multiple-time winners caught stuffing lead weights and other fish filets in their fish to have the heaviest catch to win hundreds of thousands in prizes. pic.twitter.com/Sxqeo2XC0K

— Billy (@Billyhottakes) October 1, 2022

The comparison was inevitable:

pic.twitter.com/vhLW7Hp96P

— waffle house denialist (@botulismsundae) October 1, 2022

The moment the cheats were caught out can be sen in full below:

The cops were called and the matter escalated into an open investigation by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office, per Kotaku.

Runyan and Cominsky were tussling to win $28 760 (just over R500 000) in prize money, accumulated from the competing fishermen’s entry fees.

The two have since been banned from ever competing at future Lake Erie Walleye Trail tournaments:

The scandal… cast a shadow over their previous wins. They came in first place in each of the three previous Lake Erie Walleye Trail events this year, in June, July and September, raking in tens of thousands of dollars, and had won several other tournaments elsewhere, Mr. Fischer said.

According to Ross Robertson, a professional angler who has written extensively about fishing, the sport has become rife with cheating since better technology and ballooning prizes have become incentives:

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

He said that stuffing weights into the fish was a “sloppy” way to cheat, but might just be the “thing that stalls other cheating and causes some major changes in procedures”.

[sources:nytimes&kotaku]