Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship
Weights in the Fish
Cleveland, Ohio · Friday, September 30, 2022
Walleye photo: Sam Stukel, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, public domain.
The team
Nobody could beat them
Jake Runyan of Cleveland and Chase Cominsky of Hermitage, Pennsylvania fished as a team on the Lake Erie Walleye Trail. A walleye tournament has one rule that matters. Teams bring back their five heaviest fish, and the heaviest bag wins.
Before 2021 they had never finished higher than 13th in the season standings. Then they started winning almost everything. Runyan said their 2021 prize money passed $300,000.
People got suspicious. Late in 2021 one of them failed a lie detector test at a Toledo tournament, and the ruling cost them about $120,000. In April 2022 police in Rossford, Ohio looked into another complaint. Nobody was charged.
19 events run by director Jason Fischer since 2019
The next most successful team in those same events won two.
The weigh in
Five pound cookie cutters
Bad weather cut the championship to one day. Plenty of teams came back with one or two fish. Before Runyan and Cominsky weighed in, the best bag was 28.18 pounds.
Their bag hit 33.91. That would have made them champions and Team of the Year, worth $28,760.
Tournament director Jason Fischer looked at the fish and saw ordinary Lake Erie walleye. He called them five pound cookie cutters. The scale said they averaged 6.78 pounds apiece.
He asked the team to set the fish aside for a photo, pressed on a belly, and felt something hard. Then he picked up a knife. A crowd of anglers was filming.
On the ramp
On the news
One TikTok of the moment passed 7.7 million views within a week.
Pull the lead out
How much did the cheat buy them?
Fischer pulled ten egg shaped lead sinkers out of the fish. Eight weighed 12 ounces and two weighed 8 ounces. Tap each sinker to take it off the scale and watch where their bag lands on the leaderboard.
Leaderboard
- 1Runyan and Cominsky33.91
- 2Best bag before them28.18
With all the lead inside, they win by 5.73 pounds.
Fillets cut from other walleye were stuffed in with the sinkers so they would not clank. Nobody published what those fillets weighed, so even the lowest number here is too high.
The fallout
From the ramp to jail
- Disqualified on the spotOther anglers shouted at the pair to leave. Police took names but made no arrest. Steve Tyszko and Chris French were named champions.
- The boat is seizedWildlife officers took Cominsky's Ranger boat from his home. Under the steering console they found a hidden compartment that smelled like rotten fish.
- ChargedA grand jury charged both men with cheating, attempted grand theft and possessing criminal tools, all felonies, plus a misdemeanor for owning the extra fillets.
- GuiltyOn the day jury selection was supposed to start, both men pleaded guilty to cheating and the wild animals charge.
- SentencedJudge Steven Gall gave them 10 days in jail, 18 months of probation, a $2,500 fine each and a three year fishing license suspension. The boat went to the state.
- AuctionedOhio sold the boat for an $82,000 winning bid. The money is buying a patrol boat for wildlife officers on Lake Erie.
Sentencing day
"It's the most ignorant decision I've ever made in my life."Jake Runyan, speaking to the judge on May 11, 2023
The math
Was it worth it?
What they were chasing
Prize money for the championship and Team of the Year
What they lost
- A $100,000 boat
- Three years without a fishing license
- Ten days in the Cuyahoga County jail
- A felony conviction
- Trust in every win they had before that night
Starting in 2023, the top five teams at every Lake Erie Walleye Trail event can have their fish cut open. Metal detectors now sit at the weigh in.
Sources. NPR, NBC News, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office, Associated Press via Daily Iberian, WKYC, Columbus Dispatch via AOL, Wikipedia summary. Videos play from YouTube.