Two men could face 3 years in prison after Ohio walleye tournament organizers accused them of filling their winning catch with weights to win a $30,000 prize.
Everyone knows anglers love to tell “big fish” stories — but it turns out that tournament officials don’t receive it well when competitors exaggerate their catches.
Jacob Runyan, 42, and Chase Cominsky, 35, were basking in the glow of their win at the Lake Erie Walleye Trail championship. With five weighty fish, they beat out 60 other two-person teams.
But Ohio walleye tournament Director Jason Fischer had concerns. The fish seemed too heavy, with uncharacteristically large bulging. In a video that quickly went viral, he cut the fish open in front of a large audience — and found weights and pieces of other fish inside.
“We got weights in fish!” he screams in the clip. “Get the **** out of here!”
That moment led to an investigation of the winning fishermen, who an Ohio grand jury indicted last week. According to Yahoo News, Runyan and Cominsky each face three felonies: cheating in a competition, attempted grand theft, and possessing criminal tools. They both also face a misdemeanor charge of unlawful ownership of wild animals.
If convicted, they could serve up to a year in prison for each felony, and pay thousands of dollars in fines.
A Line of Suspicious Wins
Given the obvious outrage from other anglers present at the competition, Runyan and Cominksy might consider themselves lucky. Tournament organizers disqualified them, and then urged them to leave quickly to avoid physical harm.
It’s not the first time that Runyan and Cominsky have raised suspicions at fishing tournaments.
Officials disqualified them from the Lake Erie Fall Brawl last year after one of them failed a mandatory post-tournament polygraph test, The Toledo Blade reported. (Apparently, polygraph tests have become more common at fishing tournaments to catch cheaters.)
The duo also won the Rossford Walleye Roundup in April. But the second-place winner, Joe Whitten, told the Toledo Blade that he smelled something fishy about the men’s behavior.
“They didn’t hold up their fish for everyone to see, they didn’t show anyone their fish, and they didn’t donate them,” Whitten said. “There were multiple signs that something was going on.”
In an emotional post to the Facebook page for Lake Erie Walleye Trail, Fischer — who discovered the weighted fish — apologized to the Ohio fishing community.
“To see so much negative light on our sport hurts me to the core,” Fischer said on Facebook. “I can tell you as a tournament director this will not be tolerated. I’ll figure out how to make this right for my anglers.”
