Jason Fischer became suspicious when the five fish, which he estimated to weigh about four pounds each — or 20 pounds total — weighed nearly 34 pounds. Participants in a fishing tournament in Cleveland on Friday also had doubts. “No way,” said a man.
Mr. Fischer, the director of the tournament known as the Lake Erie Walleye Trail, inspected one of the walleye and felt a hard object in his stomach that seemed unnatural. “It’s not like they eat rocks,” he said.
He grabbed a knife and cut the fish open while Jacob Runyan, a member of the two-person team presenting it for the weigh-in, looked on. The next few moments rocked the competitive fishing world.
“We have weights in fish!” Mr Fischer shouted, holding up an egg-sized ball of lead which he had plucked from the fish in a dramatic moment captured on videos posted online.
He then spoke directly to Mr. Runyan as if he were an angry referee throwing out a recalcitrant player. “Get out!” he shouted, interrupting the demand with an expletive.
Members of the crowd accused the men of theft and demanded that the police be called.
Mr. Runyan and teammate Chase Cominsky would have taken first place and a prize of about $30,000, but they were disqualified after the ball of lead — and subsequently several others — was spotted in the fish, Mr. Fischer said.
Mr. Cominsky and Mr. Runyan were unavailable on Saturday and Sunday.
The scandal reported by The Blade of Toledo cast a shadow over their earlier victories. They placed first in each of the three previous Lake Erie Walleye Trail events this year, in June, July and September, raked in tens of thousands of dollars and had won several other tournaments elsewhere, Mr. Fischer said.
Ross Robertson, a professional angler who has written extensively on fishing, said the use of technology and balloon prices in recent years have made the sport more competitive and encouraged cheating.
Cheating in competitive fishing is more common than many people think, Mr Robertson said. He listed the myriad ways people do this: They get pre-caught fish delivered to them by friends; they fish in forbidden areas; they put fish in cages before competition; You fill them with ice and add weight as you weigh it, which melts and leaves no trace.
“You have to keep in mind that in some of these tournaments, ounces can mean tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said.
Mr Robertson said putting weights in fish was a primitive and “sloppy” way of cheating, Mr Fischer’s suspicions show.
“It would be like saying a five-foot-tall person weighs 500 pounds, but when you look at them, they look like an athlete,” said Mr. Robertson. “These fish were so plump.”
Mr. Fischer, a police sergeant in suburban Cleveland, said he spoke to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources about what happened. “Everything has been turned over to law enforcement,” he said. A department representative was not immediately available.
Mr Fischer said he was unclear about his options to reclaim money from previous tournaments Mr Runyan and Mr Cominsky had won.
He said the men took voice stress and polygraph tests for his tournaments, a common practice for winners of such events, and they passed. Mr Fischer said an observer was also on their boat at a previous competition.
“Obviously if they could get through all those hurdles, they’re very good at deceiving people,” he said.
Mr Robertson called the incident a “black eye” for the sport and said he had received messages from anglers across the country wanting to know what was happening. But he also believed the scandal could be a boon if the sport learned from it.
“Perhaps this is the thing that will stop other fraud attempts and make some significant changes in the procedures,” he said.
Christine Chung contributed reporting and Jack Begg contributed research.