CanyonAg77 said:

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I'm a little surprised that no one has had a Eureka! moment and figured out that the specific gravity of these fish is way off. Shouldn't they be close to the same weight per volume as water?

Or, at minimum, couldn't a biologist create a chart that says a fish of X length should weigh Y pounds?

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Robby Rose got caught because he stuffed a one pound lead weight in the fish, causing it to sink when released back into the holding tank.

Quote:

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After Rose turned in his fish, tournament officials noticed an irregularity. Instead of swimming around in the tank like other caught fish, his bass sank to the bottom.

"With a weight that's one-tenth of the fish, it's going to go down," Collins said. "It's not going to be able to swim."

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His claim was also ridiculous. He would have finished second WITHOUT the weight and won the boat. However, being a dumbass cheater, he didn't stuff enough weight into the fish to win. So, he argued he wasn't cheating because second place was "his" to do with however he wanted, which is exactly what you would expect from a dumbass cheater.

Cheating Robby Rose

https://trib.al/wigxf2f

Felony charges for these guys

Gunny456 said:

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Understand. My point has been to enforce the fact that it is not rampant and that the tournaments have not " ruined fishing".

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I won't go so far as to say that tournaments have "ruined fishing" but they have certainly introduced a bunch of negative aspects.

Firstly, even C&R tournaments have a direct negative impact on a given fishery. Large numbers of boats hauling ass across a lake and pounding the fish repeatedly leads to spookier fish. Plus, fish are typically just dumped back into the water at the ramp near the weigh-in rather returned to where they were caught.

Second, regarding negative aspects and this is mainly in saltwater, is the creation of tactics like burning flats in redfish tournaments which absolutely harms the fishery. Not only does it have the potential to tear up the bottom and leave prop scars in the grass but the constant running across the flat when burning spooks the fish. It's just not a sporting practice. And while cheating may not be rampant the money involved in lots of tournaments leads to behavior that is less than ethical at times.

I get that tournaments are never going away but in this day & age, why not require video recording on the boat which must be running the entire time on the water? Then fish must be measured & weighed on camera with a certified scale and/or ruler that is handed out just prior to launch and then checked again at the ramp when the angler returns? That way you can document the catch, measure it, and return it to the water where it was caught?

rab79 said:

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Gunny456 said:

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Yep. CCA and their events are worthless. They have done nothing to improve the fisheries.

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Not really, their political support for effective fisheries management when they were the GCCA helped remove gillnets sooner than would have been possible without them, but the emphasis on stocking since then has just been window dressing. If they would put as much effort into habitat, specifically reestablishing submerged (shoal grass) and emergent (marsh cordgrass) grass beds they would have a much greater long term impact on bay fisheries. Unfortunately, numbers of fish stocked is sexier than acres of habitat established.

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CCA has done great things in the past but I do agree they'd be better off focusing more on habitat restoration and creation than stocking efforts given the relative ineffectiveness of saltwater stocking programs.

CCA has also upset people by, in their view, not being sufficiently aggressive in advocating for the recreational angler on red snapper seasons/limits and doing more to advocate against the Obama Administration's "Idle Iron" program that required the destruction of inactive offshore rigs which had become tremendously valuable fish habitat in the Gulf.

That being said, I thing CCA is a worthwhile organization doing good things and worthy of support.

schmellba99 said:

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Gunny456 said:

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That is a blatant false statement. Sounds like your friend could never win a tournament.

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Can't speak for any other than the tournaments that are held out of Matagorda, but there are a specific set of rules named unofficially after a particular person that, once they were implemented, that person magically stopped winning tournaments there like he and his team had regularly before.

Now, you might argue that before those rules were made it wasn't cheating, but anybody with any semblance of sportsmanship and gamesmanship knows that when you have parts of your team (or somebody not in the tournament) camp out in an area before the tournament starts or have only 1 person in the team check in at the marina while the rest of the team is already on the water that you are absolutely skirting the rules. When the last boats that come in somehow manage to win by razor thin margins, it's not always luck. Especially when it's the same people following the same MO. Sometimes it is genuinely luck, but luck doesn't strike that often and in that repeatable of a pattern.

Anytime money is involved, there are those that are going to bend and skirt the rules to the point that additional rules have to be made because they are gaming the system. If you choose not to see that, well, good for you I guess. But to act like fishing tournaments havent had those game the system and flat out cheat since the beginning is pretty naive IMO. Because people are people, and when money is involved, the worst tends to come out unfortunately.

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I had an awesomely fun time on a fishing / bros trip that coincided with a Troutmasters tourney in Matagorda a good 20 years ago. A friend's co-worker was a partial owner of Riverbend Tavern which was tourney HQ. Stevie Ray Vaughn coverband played one night, got lucky with a local. We were wade fishing a nice spot the next morning when the winner's group came trudging toward us from farther in -- with his 10 pounder on his stringer. Biggest trout I've ever seen before or since.

Also forfeited a 100k boat and read in another article they had their fishing licenses suspended…I think 5 years.

Edit 3 years

Not enough.
Should have been a lifetime ban.

This is too much in all facets of our society that crime pays. With how many times those guys have cheated they are still ahead after these punishments.

SGrem said:

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Not enough.
Should have been a lifetime ban.

This is too much in all facets of our society that crime pays. With how many times those guys have cheated they are still ahead after these punishments.

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Stole hundreds of thousands and got 10 days in jail.

Soft.

Crime pays nowadays.

Chase Cominsky is facing more legal issues for stalking and forgery.

https://www.fieldandstream.com/fishing/walleye-cheater-charged-using-counterfeit-money/?amp

La Fours said:

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Chase Cominsky is facing more legal issues for stalking and forgery.

https://www.fieldandstream.com/fishing/walleye-cheater-charged-using-counterfeit-money/?amp

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I think the other guy has domestic violence cases pending.

Sickening. They tried to steal $134,000. 10 Days?

Seriously, you are ruining so much and you get 10 days!

Looks like one of the cheaters is getting busted for poaching deer. Used his wife's tags for years because he license was suspended. Maybe this will be enough to put him away for a while.

https://www.wfmj.com/story/49887639/hermitage-fisherman-who-cheated-in-tournament-now-accused-of-poaching-deer

This guy is quite enterprising.

Quote:

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Cominsky is also awaiting trial in Mercer County Common Pleas Court in a separate case involving charges of conspiracy to commit forgery and theft by deception.

The charges stem from an incident earlier this year when Cominsky allegedly gave his son two phony $100 bills to spend at a bowling alley.

Cominsky's 18-year-old son has already been placed on probation for one year after pleading guilty to theft by deception in the case.

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Poaching deer out of season, at night, on a suspended license.

real POS

cheating, poaching, forgery

Quote:

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Wardens followed up on these accusations and searched Cominsky's home in Hermitage, Pennsylvania. They discovered five mounted bucks that had either been tagged in another person's name or killed at night during that timeframe, according to NBC-4. All five of the deer would have been deemed illegal harvests anyways because, as wildlife officials pointed out in the criminal complaint, Cominsky has been banned from hunting in Pennsylvania since 2008 due to prior game-law violations.
Cominsky is scheduled to be arraigned in Mercery County Court on Nov. 14.

The poaching case only adds to Cominsky's pile of legal woes, as they come on the heels of forgery charges that were filed against him in February. According to the criminal complaint in that case, which is still ongoing, Cominsky and his 18-year-old son tried passing off counterfeit bills at a bowling alley in Hermitage.

These forgery charges made a bigger splash than they would have otherwise because Cominksy was already in the spotlight for his role in a highly publicized cheating scandal that rocked the professional fishing world in October 2022. On Sept. 30 of that year, he and his teammate Jacob Runyan were caught red-handed stuffing their walleyes with lead weights to increase their overall bag weight.

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Maybe I'm naive, but it just boggles my mind how many bad people there are out there.

oragator said:

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Maybe I'm naive, but it just boggles my mind how many bad people there are out there.

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Absolutely immoral people that deserve banishment from society.