Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Cheating at the Walleye Tournament.

Making fishing a competition is a great way to ruin the pursuit, just as with hunting.

We don't have walleye down in Georgia. But I have caught walleye in Quetico Park Ontario. Fried 'em up at my little camp, on my Coleman stove watching the sun set and having a drink of Jack Daniels. Most enjoyable and a delicious fish.

It is bizarre to make this into a competitive sport, I don't get it.

Same in Colorado. Same guy won for several years in a row, so first lie detector, then spot checks on the ice, finally consent to search vehicles on the Entry Form. Found illegal live bait in the guys trunk. But I got news for ya, the Officials and Sponsors are in on it as well. I saw an official trim a tail with scissors also. Should be illegal to use fish or game to conduct contests where prize money is awarded. Sidenote: I won a consolation prize one time for catching 0 fish.

Anybody would have to be really stupid to add a bunch of weight to a fish. I couldn't, but have a bunch of buds that can judge the weight of certain local fish within a few ounces just with a quick look.

I'm sure the local Walleye guys could immediately know something was off.

It doesn't get any better than the Quetico. The BWCA of Minnesota and Quetico are connected and have over 2 million acres of pristine wilderness. I used to go every year but it's been awhile now, too long.

A saloon in the micro town of Bliss, ID has held a rock chuck derby annually for years as a fund raiser for worthy events. I heard rumors that they've cancelled it for next year because of rampant cheating. It's judged by the average size of the chucks shot and they have some pretty nice prizes. Some competitors have been bringing in dead chucks from elsewhere, spoiling it for everyone. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that some of the chucks have been weighted with sinkers, too.

I remember a case in which what had long been considered the world record pronghorn buck was found to have been faked. They were examining it and noticed a strange crack about a half inch above the base and x-rayed it. Somebody, many years before had taken another piece of horn and had split it used it to make the horn longer. Pronghorn horns can be steamed and removed from the core and that is what they did and after removing it had fitted the split pieces in place and nailed them with small nails and covered up the cracks/seams/nails with lamp black. I remember seeing a photo of the x-ray but it was more than 20 years ago. This was done long before they kept records and nobody even knew who killed the animal since the head was just found hanging in a saloon. This is why they now x-ray all potential high scoring animals for the record books.

North woods walleye is the best. One correction though: GA does have Walleye in most of the mountain lakes
however it is nothing like up north, Catching them is very inconsistent but they are there. Best fishing is Spring when they are more active. After that they go deep and are hard to find. Some folks do good catching them but are pretty tight lipped.

Anytime prize money is up for grabs there are going to be some people willing to do anything to get it. Years ago I was hooked into leading a Boy Scout troupe. The rules for the Pine Wood Derby were to use the materials given to build a car to compete down a ramp for speed. There were all manner of exotic cars that showed up that had been professionally built and painted. It ended up being a contest of masters at car building not at all what the contest was designed to accomplish.

Don't know why they don't just officially make it a dads' event and let the kids go play some video games or something.

Taking a slightly different angle on this - I wonder how their wives and kids are taking this. Feel for the kids being ribbed about their dads being cheaters. Kids can be brutal to other kids.

It was the same shenanigans for the Soap Box Downhill race. The kids were supposed to build their car but it ended up being a contest for professional mechanics. The Dyess AFB troupe race car had an aluminum frame. Many of the care were professionally painted. They were works of art. It wasn’t for the kids. It was for the parents.

One of the reasons to have kids...Duh!

PS that Teflon lubrication can make ugly cars go fast...

People can ruin anything. To me personally, turning the pursuit of fish and game into a contest via a tournament debases the underlying purpose of hunting and fishing to begin with. I get that others enjoy making everything in life a contest, but it isn’t for me. There was another famous case in bass fishing where a guy snagged monster fish and held several lake records. How could you even enjoy the ‘status’ that came with winning when you cheated this way?

You should see the stuff I've been asked to do to make pinewood derby cars faster... 😁

Buddy of mine was out fishing years ago while unbeknownst to him a catfish tournament was going on.
He caught a nice cat, wound up conversing with some tourney anglers and swapped it for beer. Turned out to be the winning fish.

Reason #48 on why I don’t fish tournaments.


This one is 100% lead free.

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Kids might not be theirs......cheaters attract cheaters n all

This. Money has ruined a lot of fun fishing for a lot of people.

Yep.