The Ohio Walleye elite fishing tournament world was turned upside down Saturday as winning angler team Jacob Runyan and Chase Cominsky, winners of the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship, were revealed, on stage during the weigh-in, to have stuffed lead sinkers and walleye filets into the bodies of the five fish they’d caught, Cleveland.com reports.
“When I felt something hard in the belly of their first fish, and their limit of five walleye seemed excessively heavy, at more than 33 pounds, for their length, I called for a fillet knife,” said Tournament Director Jason Fischer (yeah, that’s his name). Cominskey had already left the stage and locked himself in his truck in the parking lot by the time Fischer had revealed the subterfuge to the crowd. Runyan was told to leave immediately before the other anglers beat him to death. The pair, long suspected of being cheating assholes in the Northern Ohio circuit, were then immediately stripped of the $30,000 prize in the tournament. Fischer, a cop, promptly called police and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Past Ohio fishing event cheaters have faced prosecution.