Cheat, cheat, never beat. (Live fish, dead fish. Stuffed with lead fish.)

Well, yesterday's post was a cautionary tale about catfishing. Today's is about a fish of a different color, the walleye pike.

When I think of professional sports, professional athletes, I'm usually in a narrow zone of the big American four - baseball, football, hockey, basketball - and the obvious significant non-team sports others: golf, tennis, track, skiing, racecar driving. Oh, and soccer. 

So I'm always a bit taken aback when I read about someone making a living as a professional gamer, or poker player, or via fishing. 

But when it comes to these sorts of fun and games, there is big money to be made. And some of that money is being made by those who bait a hook and can reel in a big one.

For walleye pike, the Lake Erie champeens the last few years have been the team of Jake Runyan and Chase Cominsky. Given their prior success, they were the favorites to win big at a the recent Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship in Cleveland Harbor. The prize for catching the weightiest five walleyes was nearly $30K, and 30 two-man angling teams were competing for that prize. 

When Runyan and Cominsky handed over their bag o' fish for the weigh in, tournament head Jason Fischer sensed that there was something a bit off. 

“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 Fischer, who also works as law enforcement officer in the Cleveland area.

The first slice opened the body cavity, and with almost no prodding, Fisher’s video showed one of the big sinkers falling from the walleye’s body cavity.

“We’ve got weights in the fish!” Fischer announced to the crowd around the weigh-in stage, many with cell phone video cameras. A total of about 10 sinkers were ultimately removed from the five walleye. (Source: Cleveland.com)

I've heard of Walleye Étouffée. But stuffed with lead? 

Talk about hook, line, and sinker. 

The Runyan-Cominsky duo, which has won expensive boats and tens of thousands over the past several years, had been suspected of cheating by fellow anglers. But here was the smoking gun. This was, proof wise, pretty much a lead pipe - or lead sinker - cinch.

Runyan and Cominsky had been sneaky shrewd enough to pad those sinkers with other andh hunks of filleted walleye "so that the sinkers wouldn't bump each other and make noise."

Not wanting chaos, Fischer demanded that Runyan, who was weighing the fish, leave immediately because of threats from others anglers. Cominsky had already locked himself in his truck in the parking lot.

As I said, there's big money at stake here, so Cominksy (along with co-crimer Runyan) may well find himself locked in something more secure and less comfortable than his truck.

While cheating in fishing tournaments is rare, those who have risked it have found themselves severely fined and even jailed. In tournament fishing circles, a cheating angler becomes a pariah in a sport where competitors rely their reputations and on friendly sponsors for expense money and fishing tackle.

I'm guessing that, whether they end up in the hoosegow or not, Runyan and Cominsky have participated in their last fishing derby. And I'm guessing that in tournaments where there's serious money on the line, those weighing bags may be getting more scrutiny than they have been getting traditionally. I can definitely see some sort of TSA-style screening in the future. 

Not that I'll be there to see it, as I don't typically follow the world of professional fishing. 

Still, interesting to learn a bit about it. And pretty shocked that such obvious cheating went on. Didn't these idiots think that eventually someone was going to notice something fishy going on?