CLEVELAND — Two fisherman are accused of cheating to win a competition that offers big prize money to the winners.
The fallout began Sept. 30, during the weigh-in, when the director of the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship discovered metal weights in the fish presented by a two-man team.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources is investigating the incident. Officials said they are preparing a report for the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.
One of the people who was on the scene and witnessed the controversy unfold was Steve Hendricks, a competitive angler.
“So there’s been some suspicion for sometime now and everybody’s been kind of going back and forth, and then at the weigh in, a guy had a 4-pound fish, and when they put in on the scale, it ended up weighing almost 8 pounds, when a 20-pound bag that ended up weighing 35 pounds,” said Hendricks, who was a part of the group who won Team of the Year at the tournament. “So when they put that on, that was just an outrage.”
Hendricks said while it was good that it was caught, the situation itself is unfortunate.
“It’s great that it happened, but it’s terrible that it happened, but we’re just going to have to pay more attention now and maybe, unfortunately, put some other rules in place to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Hendricks said.
