Ok I'll recap. I mentioned it before on here or maybe it was Bart's Fish Pic thread.
There's a couple walleye tournament programs. (highest weight for a limit of fish)
MWC - Masters Walleye Circuit
LEWT - Lake Erie Walleye Tour
NWT - National Walleye Tour
Maybe others, IDK
Then there's Derbies like I fish. (Big fish wins)
Walleye Fall Brawl was the big one that split due to differences of opinion (we all know how that happens)
Walleye Slam
Fish Crazy
Dish Donkey
are a few derbies I have been in.
These tournaments and derbies often coincide with one another.
Here's where it started:
The post-event turmoil is all about the polygraph tests the big winners are required to take.
www.cleveland.com
What it doesn't say in the article (for legal reasons I am sure), is that the fish they turned in for this event had (shall we say) a "day old" look about them. They were obviously not fresh caught.
Well the guy running the tourny that DQ'd them caught a lot of flack over it and this absolutely huge Derby took a major hit in the participants since.
Since then, they have managed to pass every lie detector test. This is standard procedure for tournaments and derbies. But suspicion was there, mainly because the same people don't win all the time. It just doesn't happen in walleye fishing tournaments. And these two kept winning. So, anglers were getting upset, and they started complaing because they knew somehow they were cheating. A camera man was placed on the boat, as that happens with winning anglers. The others thought for sure they would get caught now. But they didn't.
Then yesterday they got caught. The tournament director either is or was a law enforcement officer. Now this is my personal opinion from here on. There was a video on Facebook showing the set up of the staging area. There were some sort of law enforcement officers in the video, the same ones as shown in the pics. I asked hubby if that was normal to have them at the weigh-ins. He said it was not. No one has ever protested the catch from these two before. That protester had cash on hand , said he caught the same size fish and they weighed a lot less than the other 2 guy's fish. And, well, you saw what happened. BTW there are other videos, but the "F-bomb" was being dropped left and right, so I won't even try to post it. I think the tournament director brought the protesting rule to the attention of those he could trust. It had to be more that one team, because of the size of the fish had to be the same or very near. I think the camera crew may have been collecting evidence and this was a sting operation that finally came together. Again, just my opinion. This is a felony offence. It has also been very detrimental to the fishing business on Lake Erie.